Solving Life Problems: 5 Essential Skills you need to make it

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permission from the copyright holder. By the way, if you do read this you are a very serious person and I bet you think you’re smart.

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Preface
Welcome to the most exciting book you have never read! Solving Life Problems is a work designed to be for the everyday person who simply wants to understand how to manage life a little easier. The simple focus of this ebook is to impart to you a very basic set of skills for the management of life. For this reason, it’s not an academic text nor is it purely a handbook. It’s a combination of a basic set of ideas of what I have come to learn through my research as being essential to making it in the rough and tumble world. I make no apologies for the lack of references academic language or mathematical models. This is a book for you and if you will take to heart the principles here you will manage life better and have good success.

Remember you have to make the most of this life God has given us so please read on and enjoy Solving Life Problems. This book is essentially a collection of most popular blog posts put into a form that can be downloaded. I have made this a short readable book so that you can begin to identify these core skills in your own life and get started straight away. This is not a definitive

book, it is merely a very brief overview of some of the core skills I think are necessary for making it in life.

“You grab a challenge, act on it, then honestly reflect on why your actions worked or didn’t. You learn from it and then move on. That continuous process of lifelong learning helps enormously in a rapidly changing economic environment.” John Kotter (American Academic at Harvard Business School in Fortune, 22 August, 1994). “You grab a challenge, act on it, then honestly reflect on why your actions worked or didn’t. You learn from it and then move on. That continuous process of lifelong learning helps enormously in a rapidly changing economic environment.” John Kotter (American Academic at Harvard Business School in Fortune, 22 August, 1994). Imagine for a moment you are a pilot in charge of a cargo plane flying out of war stricken Baghdad. You are about to take off when you feel the typical pre-flight nerves and all you can think about is the war going on in your surroundings. For just a brief moment, you look at your flight engineer and your first officer to notice the same tension in their faces. A question forms itself in your mind, why am I doing this? The danger is all around you, your ears can hear the gunfire going off and you can see the smoke from the flames. The atmosphere here is tense to say the least. You radio in for take off and prepare yourself with fear filling your heart to take off from the relative safety of the air strip to the certain insecurity of the skies. As the plane roars down the tarmac these doubts permeate your mind drilling their way into your conscious thoughts when suddenly you hear and feel an almighty bang. For a moment your mind slips into a dream as escape the reality of the situation only to hear a distant voice yelling at you from the side. It’s your Belgian co-pilot screaming at you that the controls no longer work and the airplane it’s essentially a ticking time bomb. You test the controls, he’s not lying this man is telling you the truth the controls have gone! As you think through the scenarios and the actions you can take fear grows large in your heart. I am going to die. That’s it. I knew I shouldn’t have taken the dam assignment in this country, why on earth would I want to fly a plane in a country as unstable as this? Now I am paying the price for my stupidity! As you are plagued with self-doubts, fear and insecurity the reality of your situation hits as the co-pilot again screams at you for action. You take glance at your flight engineer who is an older man with you with countless years of experience and he gives you a worried glance back. The younger brash first officer, ambitious and more grounded than you in this situation looks worried. His eyes betray his youthful zest because of the terror you can see staring back at you. Immediately you think back to a similar problem and what the crew did. They applied thrust in relative amounts to get through the crisis but what was the result of that interchange? Oh that’s right they died. So www.lukehoughton.com 5

what do I do? As you attempt to take control of the giant plane you realize one thing, it doesn’t seem to work as well as it used to, no hydraulics! You curse; turn to look at your flight engineer and the first officer who still seems to think there is a way out. Within yourself you want to believe him but thinking of that previous crash when one of your colleagues died in a similar situation, you are not so sure. With sweat pouring from every conceivable area of your body, nerves chattering away and fear consuming your thoughts you know it’s time to act. If this was you how would you deal with it? This story is actually true and it occurred over the airways of Baghdad during the beginning of the current Iraq war. The plane was shot at from the ground by a heat-seeking surface to air missile which clipped the wing of the plane and damaged the hydraulic control system on the airplane. In turn this affected the controls rendering them useless. All this trio had to negotiate a landing with was the actual engine of the airplane. By applying a combination of various speeds they learned they could successfully control the airplane. The three of them sat there discussing it until them came up with a plan they could execute that might put them on the ground at some stage. This was there only hope. Did they make it, yes there plan worked where at least two others had failed with fatal consequences. The funny thing about this story is that all three men were placed in a situation where they had to draw not only on what they knew but the core life skills. The first thing they had to do was learn an appropriate way to manage the situation by trying different ideas. There was no room for going to the book to find out what to do in this situation it was life and death. No room for error. The concepts acquired quickly by the pilots formed themselves into actions as they put their ideas into practice. No time for mistakes as they did what no other team in history had achieved previously. I know some people who faced with similar smaller scale problems face them by not knowing how to learn there way out of a problem. Through fear and a genuine lack of self-confidence they fail to appropriate the most basic of skills which is to learn. Learning is not a skill particular to ‘gifted’ individuals; it’s an ability most people can use on a regular basis. After the pilots have assessed the situation by learning about it they begin to construct a way out of the problem. While they are learning they are drawing on another ‘life skill’. Change had been thrust upon these pilots in the most horrible manner and they quickly have to learn how to fly without the typical controls they are used to. So what do they do? Our DHL pilots experiment by learning how to manage the change thrust upon them by employing different ideas. As the situation grows worse new ideas and problems arise yet the pilots keep testing ideas and come up with solutions to manage the difficulties they face. Essentially by learning what to do, appropriating changes and reflecting on these actions they have built a bridge that led them out of the problem. www.lukehoughton.com 6

Finally the other thing these pilots did so well was managing the complexity the problem kept throwing them. The DHL team: learned, managed the changes as they came and built appropriate responses, began solving the problem by trying different ideas, worked through a solid team based relationship and managed the complexity the situation effectively. So how did they make it? Through learning, adapting, changing, look at the related elements in it’s complexity, these essentially solved the problem. In the end the pilots landed and skidded to a halt at the end of the runway back at the same airport they took off from. As they exited the plane they would have thought, “That’s it this horrible ordeal is over.” Not quite, as they stepped off the plane on the ground a fire truck approached them with a man waving his hand frantically trying to get the DHL team’s attention. The ground they stood on was part of the taking of Baghdad and contained landmines. Carefully, as the truck reversed through a cleared path they walked, following the tracks left by the fire truck. Ironically, they walked behind each other step by step until they were safely away from the landmines. The final actions mimicked what had already taken place in the air – step by step – they managed a life problem through the effective use these elements.

What are life problems?

A life problem is a generic term that I use to describe issues that confront us on a daily basis. The problem of how to pay the bills, the problems of marriage and career and so on. Life problems are those that arise in our day to day lives that demand attention and simply will not go away until hey are solved. These are the issues of life, the pressing matters, the things we find to be a problem in our lives. Such problems are not given to easy answers and we might well think of them as a mess. Not every problem we have is a mess. Most of the time the problems we find in our day to day lives require little thought to fix but the matters of life (life problems) do require a lot more work. These kinds of things have many possible answers, no real clear solution and are often a matter of perspective more so than some uncontrollable circumstance. Have you ever noticed how some things you do never seem to change no matter what it is you seem to do? What about the way in which you deal with people at work or how you talk to your children? These problems are the ones that matter yet when we look at them the world is full of conventional wisdom or “common sense” but most of that is of little value. People use sayings like, ‘Well that’s just the way it is.’ A risk averse person will often look at any given situation and say something like, ‘better than devil you know than you don’t.’ As conventional wisdom this is very sound but in life that’s of no use. Life involves risk. The greatest of the greatest always took risks. Another one of my personal favourites is this one: ‘Ignore it and it will go away.’ It some cases this www.lukehoughton.com 7

may be true. However, I have found in most cases if I ignore an issue it will become a bigger problem later on. There is a balance to be struck between proactively seeking an answer and laziness and that will be discussed later. One key point to note here is that problems do not exist as real things, like the sun, moon and stars. They exist in the conceptualisation of our hearts and minds. To understand this you will need to read on. For now, be content with this definition of a life problem: A situation in a person’s life that they think is troubling, worrisome and panic worthy. Problems like this can be best thought of as a roll of movie film stock. Each picture on that strip of film is just another frame and so shows a different part of the bigger picture for us to understand. This big picture shows us the way in which things interrelate and how the harmony or disharmony of it present itself to us. Life problems are those that surround us and confront us with their complexity and interrelationships and quite often they befuddle us with more answers than questions.

Solving Life Problems?
Take as example the life problem of depression. Depression is caused by a variety of things, some known and some unknown that operate in the minds and hearts of human beings. To say that all problems of depression can be reduced down to simple explanations is less than helpful. For example, not having enough money to pay the rent makes me depressed because I feel as if I cannot provide for my family. I have been faced with this in recent times and a virtual carnival of emotions and random thoughts go off in you that make you feel inadequate. Really though what makes me depressed is the idea that I am inadequate because I have linked the idea of my personal worth to getting money to pay the rent. People around me reinforce it through the words of their mouth and the intentions they have toward me. I believe what they say… instead of forming a better picture of myself which in essence stops the reason for the problem to occur. Here is another example from my life. Recently my daughter became sick. So sick in fact that she stopped eating for three days. During this time I went through a roller coaster of emotions all the way from panic to full blown fear. I was making the situation worse because my fear and lack of restrain was obvious. After a time I settled down my emotions by thinking different thoughts about the situation. I used my faith and said to my daughter,’you are getting better all the time…’. I quoted scriptures to her and got her involved and guess that. She didn’t improve overnight but not more than a day later it was all over. The point is: my panic and fear created the problem. By changing my perspective slowly and surely I was able to see things differently.

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Recognising things that won’t change
A friend of mine recently spoke to me about not being able to get a job in the academic profession he was in. Constantly he would complain, “I can never get a permanent job – these just won’t let me in.” My response to him at first was one of sympathy – it must have been the system working against him. It was a conspiracy. Then one day a job came up that we could both apply for. We both applied. He didn’t even get an interview and I got that job. Yet he had more papers, more experience and was clearly more senior than me in that field. What was the difference? I studied an old job advertisement and I noticed it came with a warning “Must be enrolled in a PhD.” An opportunity came up for me to apply for a PhD so I took it and got in. Then I started looking for work and as this opportunity came up I applied as did my colleague. The key difference? He wasn’t enrolled in a PhD. The ad declared this clearly but he thought that they would make an exception for him (as I did for years). Talking to those in the organization in question and speaking with other professionals I learned that they won’t employ someone who isn’t enrolled in a PhD. As a matter of fact if all the people that applied weren’t enrolled the job remains unfilled despite the fact that the need for the position continues. This changed my opinion on doing a PhD. They would rather leave a position unfilled? I had better do all I can to apply for that position so I better enrol in a PhD. He didn’t get that interview because he kept waiting for them to come to him. A job is nothing more than your employer hiring you to fix a problem they have. They need someone to do something, you get paid to do it and if you are good enough (according to their criteria) you should get promoted (if that’s what you want). What I recognised (not being able to control the academic standards) got me in a position where I could give a good interview and be hired – his understanding of the exact same thing worked in the opposite way. I have no doubt that if my friend had developed life skills (in this case learning and managing relationships) he would have pounded on that door until they let him in. As I understand it almost three years later – he is still floating from contract to contract – unable to land full time work. Now I am not a better person than he is, I have just taken my time to develop my life skills to the extent where I can use them to help me instead of hindering me. Now my colleague managed not to learn a simple fact. If the criteria says PhD enrolment required – then it’s likely they aren’t going to hire someone who isn’t – no matter how good you think you are. On the other hand – go and speak to people – build relationships with key individuals and learn what it takes to get that kind of job. This kind of skill is essential to managing life better, it’s not optional, and if you want to be successful you must submit yourself to a process of learning which at times is very stressful. In my situation I kept thinking do I really want to get a PhD? Do I really want to be an academic? Who cares if people call me doctor or not? On the other hand, what about www.lukehoughton.com 9

the long term security of family? Academic institutions in this age require a PhD before they are really serious about paying you so I had better get one. Did it cost me? Yes it did, my sanity mainly! My supervisor told me that doing a PhD is like banging your head up against a wall for three years until the wall disappears. A lot of this ‘head banging’ you will read on this website but more than this I hope you see yourself in it and learn from it.

Recognising things you can change
I once applied for a job and went to the interview deathly afraid that I wasn’t going to get the job. It showed when I got in there! So much so that they didn’t even give me a call back after the job had been filled in. That was a terrible feeling! Since then, I use positive confessions and set my mind on the scriptures to help me. Now does that always work? No. But what it does is allow me to focus my thoughts on something else so that I am not so nervous. Being positive during times like that helps me to remained balanced and focused as I sweat it out in the job interview. There are other things that we can change. We can question our own limiting beliefs. Think about the amount of times you have said, ‘it can’t be done’ when you knew in your eart that there was a chance it could be done. Remember all God needs is our faith and everything is possible from there. I have this saying which I think sums up what I am saying here: ‘People don’t have problems… people are the problem.’ More to come on that topic later. How can a problem exist if there are people around to make it real? We can change these things. We can change our attitude over a period of time by learning to refocus our thoughts on positive things. We can change our life by attaching positive or negative emotions to experiences we have had. With God’s help we can become whole, active and successful people as we learn to listen to his voice and follow his desires for us. These things are completely within our grasp to do. By reading the word of God we can get faith and by keeping healthy positive people around us… we can become like them. So it’s not all one way street with life problems. There are things we can do and things that are God’s business. Some people I meet are struck with a paralysis: I can’t do anything because I might get in God’s way or even worse hey reason themselves out of tackling the problem. ‘Oh it’s too big,’ or ‘I can’t do it’ … remember whatever you believe… good or bad is what you will think is possible or isn’t possible. That which we can control we do with God’s help and that which we can’t control is 100% God’s problem. We need to carefully recognise which is which in our lives and take appropriate action!

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Life problem ‘solving’
We need to move away from this idea that problems are solved. Somethings they are re-solved… agreed upon and we reach the stage were we decide to live with it. Other times they are (dis)solved if we think of it in the same manner as the problem solving experts (like Russell Ackoff) do. However in life things can only really dissolve when the problem ceases to be there. How can this be? How can life problems dissolve? Well a lot of the times they dissolve as we allow our conception of them to change. Will you start doing this today? How about your wife or husband? Instead of grumbling about them under your breath why not start enjoying their qualities and ignoring their faults. Why should you overlook someone’s faults? Because you have so many of your own. We expect God to overlook our faults to love us… why not overlook someone else’s and learn to love them? I am not talking about every situation because remember there are things we cannot control. Certainly, we cannot control other people and yes they may leave you or worse. Still we can control what we do to a certain extent. With God’s help we can control how we feel and over time learn to master ourselves to react to such people in a positive way. Recently I watched a person very close to me whose marriage fell completely apart. They are now divorced and in my opinion it was the best thing for that situation. That does not mean it’s the best for yours. Are you in an abusive relationship? Then ’solving’ your problem begins with you seeing a qualified counselor and getting out. There are no excuses for violence. None. There are so many life problems that are simply expectations that were never met. Why not change what you expected? Maybe you are unreasonable to expect anything from anyone because you are not perfect? The most simple definition of a problem I ever heard was when our expectations do not match what is really happening to us. I think there is merit in that simple definition. If you changed what you expected do you think that your circumstances would change? No. Jesus told us to expect the things we ask from God to come to pass before we see them. Why did he do that? I think it was because we expect things to happen based on deep down ideas and pictures about ourselves. All Jesus was really saying was … why not expect God to do something great for you and begin to talk about it before it even happens? Life problems are people made and people sustained. We have a part we play. There are things we cannot control and what we need to do is focus on what our part is and leave the rest in God’s capable hands. The only real way to handle life problems is to learn how to shift perspectives but that is another article for another day. In the mean time start looking at how you make this problem real. Start asking yourself what can I control and what I can’t. Do your part and I am sure the rest will follow. www.lukehoughton.com 11

Life Skills
Life skills are the core competencies an individual possesses, that enable them to cope with the difficulties in life. More specifically, they are those that are built on top of literacy and numeracy skills that enable an individual to be able to learn, solve problems, manage complexity, and be open to change. The Tasmanian Government’s 2020 project came up with this definition: “There is currently no known definition of life skills. However, life skills, in addition to essential literacy and numeracy skills, could encompass the ability to build sound, harmonious relationships with self, others and the environment; the ability to act responsibly and safely; the ability to survive under a variety of conditions; and the ability to solve problems” . Notice the key parts of the definition above: sound and harmonious relationships with others, acting responsibility and being able to survive under a variety of conditions and the ability to solve problems. In this short ebook I am covering the following:
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Learning: Understanding the way in which you learn and how you can develop ways of seeing and ways of understanding through your own learning style.

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Understanding Complexity and Perspectives: Using what I call a complexity perspective or systems view (God’s eye view if you like) of the world in order to understand how things relate. This is how do things connect together and how does that affect me. You see there is you and the world around you… not just YOU!

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Problem Solving: This skill is about learning how to move forward in difficult problem areas. How do you know what will work. What are the consequences involved in your thinking? Will they relate to each other and how so? This does not refer to mathematical ability. It refers to the ability to be able to solve problems and work through them by understanding the connections between the part that make the problem what it is.

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Creative Thinking/Intuition: The ability to think outside the square. How do you think? Creative thinking is not defined by anything other than how you with your unique personality can learn to think in creative ways.

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Perspective Shifting/Strategic Thinking: Systems thinking is not looking at the cause of something on a bigger scale. It’s understanding how conflicting points of view integrate to form a perceived version of reality. Strategic thinking is the art of seeing the perspectives and being able to freely move between them to get a complete view of the problem.

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Reflection: As the quote says from John Kotter says: being able to learn is incredibly important because it leads to being able to understand what we did, why it worked and why it didn’t. You will have some idea of what you did, why it worked or why it didn’t. Even if you didn’t then surely you have some concept as to what happened. It’s through the lens of

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reflection that you can see what not to do next time and learn from the most important thing in the world: your mistakes. These skills are the building blocks of a successful life. If you separate them and become good at one you will neglect the other and life will walk all over you. On the other hand, learning, adapting, changing, understanding connections and complexity will help you gain the perspective you need. Remember it’s up to you to learn these and practice them. You don’t become a professor at life overnight. It takes time, patience and plenty of understanding.

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Skill 1: Learning
For the first six months we were apart I enjoyed all the things I’d missed. I went to see only movies I wanted to see-not one war picture. I went to the gym when it was most convenient for me. I had a manicure when I wanted a manicure I did what I wanted when I wanted to. I saw all the children constantly. Eventually, I even dated a little. I realized I could get along just fine on my own, the question was, did I want to? Other men left me cold. They all had their routines down pat-every guy had his own personal schtick. At least Jerry had his hair.’ Judge Judy Scheindlin1

The popular TV Judge provides an interesting example of what I call ‘real world’ learning. After twelve years of marriage the Judge and her husband divorced and she began to see other men. After six months she had realized that she didn’t really want that kind of life, even though we can see above she enjoyed it initially. Over time her learning pointed towards the fact that there was

something intangible about her ex-husband that she was attracted to (her words) which drew her back to him. By going through the experience the Judge was able to learn what she really wanted and at the end she knew what it was. Granted there are better ways to learn such lessons but it’s still a key example of how learning in the real world sense is coupled with experience.

Learning is a key skill in solving life problems that forms the cornerstone for all the others. It’s not only the foundation but without it nothing can grow. By definition learning is the ability to acquire new knowledge, through a process or experience. The key point here is that to gain new

knowledge, when we are learning, there needs to be the experience of learning. This is the key skill required to build a successful life skill set in individuals. As an education professional I have noticed this skill is something that a majority of business schools tend to shy away from. Indeed academia at large seems more concerned now with standardization that with imparting the principles of learning. Yet we are sending these students out into a workforce that calls for, above everything else, the ability to be able to learn. Why do we continue to do this? So what is learning?

What is learning?
Typically most lifelong learning books refer to learning as the gaining of new qualifications, experience and changing one’s personal education as required. While this kind of definition suits an academic approach to life, it is not entirely consistent with the capability of learning required to make hard and fast changes in the troublesome real world. We do not all have access to the higher
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From: Beauty Fades, Dumb is Forever: The Making of a Happy Woman. HarperCollins USA.

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levels of education required but all of us can learn. So how do we learn new things? What are the principles that are developed in us as children that shape the way we learn and help us to understand things? In order to understanding how to learn over the length of a life, a basic understanding in learning is required.

In the world of our actions and reactions we learn by applying our knowledge both conscious and subconscious to the situations of concern in our lives. An example of this might be the question: How do I get promoted? There are several answers to this question. First, I might be a political person and make strategic alliances with certain people and perform certain duties for them in order to gain their favour. This is a path of learning I have now set for myself to achieve; I need to know the boss to get promoted. However, what if my boss doesn’t take to me and ignores my actions? What if my politicizing results in me getting fired? I initiated a track of learning, it did not work for me, I now take what I have learned and tell everyone about it. I tell my colleagues “Don’t go being friendly to the boss that will get you nowhere.” The truth is that it didn’t in that case, but if I used the right kind of political muscle it might have worked. Here is the first barrier to learning (discussed in the next learning chapter), logic traps. Whenever I tell myself I cannot learn my mind will think exactly that. Even though my brain helps me to learn it also stops me from doing so.

Learning takes place when I gain new information, knowledge or experience about something I had previously learned about. To learn, I read, I experience and most importantly I gain insights from the world around me. As a learner I want to add to what I know so I can more effectively use it in the world I face around me. This means I have to be actively looking for ways to gain new insights into my surrounds by trying to understand it. So how do I do that? What do I go through to get to that place where I can add new things to what I know? Where does learning begin? What types are there?

Learning Types
Learning is a core skill that forms the foundation of all kinds of personal and non-personal growth. Broadly speaking there are three main types of learning we need to be aware of (I am aware of many more but I shall concentrate on three core ones for use in this book). The first is Learning by Rote or put simply learning through study and gaining knowledge through the repetitious memorizations of ‘facts’ found in text books. I personally call this kind of learning ‘surface-level’. For example, when I was school they made us memorize our timetables by heart. Two times two is four, four times four is eight and so on. That is, learning this way is so easy it really only scratches the surface of what learning should be all about. It fails to engage with the deep issues of topic and www.lukehoughton.com 15

scraps the surface superficially. My pet Chihuahua can learn things by rote like ‘sit’ by treating them with a reward. The Chihuahua is less than likely to turn to me and ask ‘Why do you tell me to sit?’ certainly not when I have a piece of meat in my hand. It will do it because it will be rewarded for pulling up surface level learning from its brain: “When I sit I get meat”.

Aristotle for example, developed systems of logic that we all know and use in our mathematical induction and reasoning. This kind of knowledge generation or learning is based around the idea that all of our learning capacity as human beings takes place in a logical fashion or by rote. In this case, if one is to trace the history of philosophy (something done better in many different texts on this subject2) there is a clear pattern of embedding logical learning patterns into rote forms. To put it simply, this kind of learning requires you to find the pattern, follow the rules and everything will be alright. If we are learning to screw in a light bulb – technically there is only one way this is going to get done. Screw it in by following the pattern. Such a technical issue requires no

textbook exploration or real world conjecture to make it work. Put it in. If the light bulb was fine and you screwed it in ok and it still doesn’t work then there is something electrically wrong with the light bulb. A deeper level of learning is now required.

I now need to find someone who knows something about electricity. There is a complex electrical wiring system in the roof that took some planning and understanding to install. If you go into the roof without any knowledge or experience on how that works then you are going to be in trouble. Moving on from this I need some conditional learning that I can use to fix this problem. Now this kind of learning requires me to be able to learn what I am taught and apply to my problem. Returning to our electrician example, I can apply my knowledge to fixing your electrical systems because I have been conditioned that way through teaching.

When I learned what I needed I asked my instructor questions, I tried knew things and eventually learned how electrical systems work. Each wire, I placed in the ceiling I did so according to what I have learned from my training and the experience (rich or poor) that I have at this stage. When your light bulb won’t switch on, there goes your rote learning experience, your problem now has presented with you with a bit more complexity than before. I, as an electrician for example, might climb into your roof and examine the cause of the problem. I am now applying both what I was conditioned to learn (at electrician school) and what I have learned from being an electrician. In short I can fix the problem because I submitted myself to training that allowed me to become an electrician. The same thing is taking place inside universities. You want to be an accountant you

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have to submit yourself to the conditions that make that possible in order to become that accountant. Conditional learning gives me theories to test out and apply so I can become something predefined. In essence at university you don’t learn something mystical or new, you get fed what they think you need to know. This is predefined by academics who think they know what you need.

I am not being conspiratorial by saying this but you are being conditioned to doctrine. Why? You have exams to pass, a degree to obtain and more than likely a job to get. You had better condition yourself to the theory or else you may never become a professional! Such learning requires an understanding of concepts rather than just memorization. You need to explore ideas a bit here and move within certain boundaries of thought. To put it simply you are gaining theoretical knowledge which is predetermined by the teacher for you to learn. Learn that, and you will do well. Move outside the acceptable boundaries for your conditional learning and you will be in trouble.

An example of conditional learning in Business Schools is the idea that all students must learn statistics in their first year. It’s taken as given that most students need to know statistics because they are going into a world of cold hard facts. This may be true by why make it mandatory? Why condition students to make excellent regression equations when in reality unless they are really, really interested they are more than likely never going to use it. That’s conditional learning. I had the misfortune of teaching statistics for a while at a college and invariably the poor students (those that were there would remember my ineptitude suffered greatly) asked me why are we doing this? After a while I ran out of lies to tell them my standard response was, ‘well you have to’. Why? It’s deemed important by those who run the business school being the “objective” world of business and all. Conditional learning asks no questions tells no lies. Conditional forms of learning, given to us traditionally through our educational systems are largely based on a simplified version of life. Such learning is good when gaining understanding in the basic skills of life but is unfortunately lacking in broader context of the real world where the rules change constantly and very little actually stays the same.

A third type of learning that can help us, is learning by experience.

Typically this kind of

experiential learning relies on the ability to gain new insights into situations through the application of knowledge based on experience. Graham Hancock3 writes about a harsh experiential lesson in relationship to poverty: In was in such a fashion, through guilt, that Europeans at a particular moment in history, came to
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For example Bertrand Russell’s History of Philosophy. Lords of Poverty: The Power, Prestige and Corruption of International Aid Business

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see foreign aid as a vehicle of restitution, of righting past wrongs, of buying pardon. At some point they had realized, what they did was inhumane – so as the author theorizes – they tried to fix a past wrong. Surface level rote learning never questions why things are the way they are, neither does conditional learning. You don’t see electricians reinventing electrical systems everyday. They don’t have to reinvent systems like that to make it work properly; they just have to apply their learning. Granted conditional learning requires a lot more thinking and is much more subjective (open to opinion and different forms that rote learning) but it’s still limited. Experiential learning on the other hand is simultaneously the most dangerous form of learning and the most interesting.

To learn by experience, requires three key things to work properly. The first is a person with an open mind. Learning only ever takes place when the person learning is willing to open their mind to understanding the thing they are studying. We can learn what they call ‘general knowledge’ by reading and rote learning. If the learner closes their mind when they are trying to gain insights into something they are interested in learning about they will not learn a thing. On the contrary, they will learn what they have preconditioned themselves to learn. A closed mind sees the end from the beginning and does not rest in the process of learning. The point of learning is to gain new insights into something of interest so how can new insights be gained you already know what you are going to find? Learning by experience shapes the understanding of a situation as a potter shapes the clay because the learner is the one gaining not losing in this situation. With an open mind, the learner can explore the answers and form ideas of what works on the way to finding the knowledge they seek.

Having an open mind allows the learner to see the possibilities and they will try things the close minded won’t. How many people are told you ‘can’t’ or ‘don’t’ by close minded individuals. Having an open mind automatically gives the learner the opportunity to learn even before anything has started and it gives the learning process a head start. This is because when you want to know how something works, you have to understand it by not only having the theories about it in your mind but also you need to understand the way in which it can be used. A failure to use knowledge in this way produces acceptance of concepts with no ‘proof’. The open minded learner is going to see what works or what doesn’t not blindly but by building on an established set of ideas. What closes our mind is our ideas about certain things and our worldview. This is because it makes us think certain things and contains hidden assumptions that can poison our learning experience.

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My ideas and My Worldview
My ideas about things are not the same as yours. As a matter of fact, what you have learned in your life up to this point may be entirely different to what I have learned. For the sake of simplicity, whatever you know about anything (your knowledge) is called you set of ideas. The set of ideas you have about things is very different to the set of ideas I have about things. If you are like me, you came from a background that is ‘working class’ which means the ideas I have about the world are largely shaped by those kinds of values. On the other hand you may be from a background where you had access to resources that were less than mine and you view things very differently to the way I do. The output of your ideas is your actions – that is what you think is what you do.

Your thoughts are intrinsically linked to your actions. When you create new thoughts about something, in your mind you have already worked out how you are going to approach it. This is automatic. For a moment stop and think of a problem you currently have. Write in the space below in one sentence what the problem is.

Now that you have done that, study the sentence above. What happens when you consider this problem? Did you automatically think of certain kinds of solutions? This is because you have been educated to think this way. Here is an example:

“The problem is my wife hates my guts.”

Some may say, “What have you done wrong? Do you need counselling? divorced?”

Are you getting

This is because when we are faced with a problem we automatically come up with

solutions or an educated guess as to what the answer is likely to be. We have learned nothing! A guess is just that… a guess. Now this is not all bad news, this skill comes in very handy as well shall see later in this book.

As each new thought comes into your mind it gets filters through you’re your set of ideas about the world. Your view of the world will determine how you take action in the world. For example, if you have low self-esteem burrowing it’s way deep into your mind your actions, thoughts and reactions to the world outside will filter itself that perception of low self esteem. When your teacher at school said to you, “you will never amount to anything,” you took that idea and buried it in your mind. I am not a psychologist but I can tell you this – the bible tells us that as a man/woman thinks in their heart so are they. Say for example you are a young go getter looking for a way to improve your standing at work and go for a promotion. If you have confidence and faith www.lukehoughton.com 19

in your abilities you are likely to create actions and take initiatives that will give you those kinds of opportunities. If on the other hand you lack confidence despite your abilities you will actively build that kind of reality around you. The people you associate with will support your low self esteem most likely, the job you take will agree with it, the way you interact with others will agree with it and so on. Your mindset of low self-esteem will build a reality around you that is entirely consistent with your thoughts. Another example of how our view of the world affects us is found in the words of our mouth.

Here is an exercise you can do to assess your view of the world, what comes out of your mouth. It is positive? When trouble comes, as to all of us it does, how do you respond verbally? Do you say: “that’s just my luck,” or something like, “Why does it always rain on me”. Why did you say that? You have not learned anything else. The way we see the world through our perceptions of it (deeply built into our subconscious) will negatively or positively affect the image we create. That picture we build of the world are deeply held assumptions about how it operates, what people are like and so on. Here are some examples:

“She’ll be right, mate.” “What goes around comes around” “What goes up must come down” “You will never amount to anything” “You’re just like your father” “Everything happens for a reason”

Each one of these points of view holds behind a deeply held assumption about what the person who said it thinks. I would like to call these things ‘imaginations’4. These phrases are things people have built into their mind and are being expressed from their mind as words. An imagination is what I would call a micro view of the world that is held or bound to a certain way of thinking. For example the term, “you are just like your father,” automatically has a negative imagining attached to it. Why is it that being like your father is a bad thing? Maybe your father is a good person and that’s a compliment. This however, is very unlikely given the nature of people to use words to bring people ‘down’ to a certain perception of how they should think or act. The media are especially adept at this because they feed us imaginations all the time to engage with. What news we get, is given to us so we can form an imagination about it and turn it around in our mind. How
This term comes from traditional versions of the New Testament which calls views contrary to the Gospel (see 2 Corinthians 10).
4

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often do we see a dodgy business on TV and instantly feelings of hatred and judgements immediately made. That imagination has now been built in you and you in turn build it into others by becoming an evangelist for your TV show. You spread the word by going to work and saying:

“Did you see that business on TV – what a dodgy operation.”

That particular viewpoint expressed on television now creates a way of thinking about that place. There have been several classic examples of them getting it wrong and almost ruining businesses only to offer a brief apology as a way of operating in damage control. Too bad if it already has cost that business thousands. Why do they do it? They are trying to get you to build an imagination so you can engage with them and agree “what a terrible thing this is.” Every now and then they offer us imaginations to build our thinking on because most of us unfortunately have undeveloped viewpoints about things. That is, we have not learned anything except how to be spoon fed regular doses of whatever we are told. Our view of things is directly related to how we learn because what we do is build what we think on our imaginations of things. Next time you watch the news ask

yourself this question: “What is the news trying to get me imagine?” These things you begin to imagine will become part of the way you begin to view the world. If you grew up with racist

parents, the chances are your parents built racism into your view of the world. You may think you aren’t racist but go and walk amongst those of another culture and see what comes out of your mind. You may not walk up to them uttering racist sentiment but in your mind there are ideas floating around that may convince you otherwise. Not that is real learning, breaking the conditions we have been led to believe and getting the experience to challenge our underlying assumptions.

We evaluate things through our view of the world and this gives us the toolkit for building learning skills into our life. How we view things will tell us how things can be learned. If you grew up

loving science, you will take a scientific approach to life and usually rely on all things scientific to give you answers. You may use phrases like, “there is a system to everything”. This is an expression of how you think things work. We will call these kind of people “scientific people”. If you are given to this style of learning you will struggle with life because sometimes the answers are not as cut and dry. For example, Henry Ford was a great pioneer but time has shown that his management style is nothing short of abhorrent. Why? Because he saw people as “resources” and not as living beings with a mind, will and emotions. He approached management as a science, when it is more like an unstructured art. Modern works have even urged us to think of our spirit in

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the workplace5 which would make poor Henry do flips in his grave. People are not numbers, they are living beings with real families and real personalities. On one hand people are the greatest thing about a business but on the other the biggest enemy.

If your view of the world is less scientific and more open to other views you might be what I call “unscientific” and given to large bouts of intuition. If you are a ‘free’ thinker then you will evaluate everything that comes your way and form your opinions based on what you think is right and perhaps a feeling you have about it. You might be someone who questions everything, especially science and never stop learning. The unscientific approach to management would use techniques found in Semler’s Seven-Day Weekend6:
Organizations rarely believe they’re to blame when an employee underperforms. But if the organization doesn’t provide the opportunity for success, then people falter. At Semco we accept that every individual wants and needs a worthwhile pursuit in life. It’s up to us to provide the environment and opportunity for their gratification.

This kind of approach to building a workplace is different as the human resources are allowed to be more human. It’s a well-documented success story but it started by breaking the mould and breaking established business rules. The rule breakers are always learning and never accepting common ill-conceived points of view.

We will never land on the moon. What really? Never? People that make these kinds of statements about learning are scientific and evaluate everything objectively in their worldview. That

worldview will only take knowledge from those that know and they will eventually have a head full of other people’s ideas. Every pattern, every notion and every single last idea will fall into what somebody else came up with unscientifically. Learning is unscientific because it takes that which is unknown and tries to make it known. Scientists who were pioneers where the most unscientific of them all. They used faith in every endeavour and relied on personal intuition and vision as well as there academic abilities.

When we learn we are applying the single most unique and profound ability we have – the ability to gain new insights and gain fresh information. If our view of the world tells us we can learn then we can. If we are willing to question the way things are and build for ourselves new mindsets about things (despite the cost) then we can learn. Everyone can learn. As a lecturer in a business school I
5 6

William Bickham’s Liberating the spirit in the workplace is an example. Page 75-76.

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have found quite often that my students do not want to learn, they want to collect facts, but they don’t want to learn. So often I get smart questions like, “What’s on the exam?” My response to this usually is to tell them precisely what’s on the exam – lots of questions about the things I wanted you to learn. Invariably almost nobody gets what I mean by that.

What knowledge do you need to build upon to get through life? That depends on what you plan to do with it. The primary skill you need to make it is learning. A friend of mine once told me this story about learning:

My boss told me to do a job and I told him I couldn’t do it and he said to me, “Oh well I guess your going to have tell the customer that we can’t complete the job and they won’t get what they have paid for. I said to him that I would go back and try. When I did try I found a way to make it work.”

The problem is we are no longer willing to try and learn what we need to make it in life. Our view of the world tells us we can’t but in fact we can. Students often ask me for answers, I only give them more questions. After a while they stop coming to see me, because they don’t realize or cannot understand that the things I am teaching to them can only be learned by them. If the courses I teach are going to be valuable to them at all then they need to learn the stuff for themselves. I

could offer them a standard response and tell them the answer but what have they gained. Where was the struggle for new concepts, the trial and error process? What happened to that? When the objective of learning is to gain an answer, that person has lost the reason they set out to gain insights in the first place. Learning is the gaining of new information about something that you didn’t know before. However, learning comes from and goes to somewhere it’s not purely selfperpetuating. Your learning accumulates.

The second requirement for learning: your knowledge repository

Learning was earlier defined as the ability to gain new insights to add to existing to knowledge in chapter 1. To extend that definition let’s think carefully about the meaning of what it means to add to knowledge. In life, we could argue that a person adds to their knowledge when they learn something through the application of knowledge. Put simply, in the game of life we learn what works and what doesn’t through the trial and error process. Successful entrepreneur Richard Branson stressed the importance of this in his autobiography by stating that it was easy to build a successful business once you had one under your belt7. This may seem counter intuitive and
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Losing My Virginity, Richard Branson, Three Rivers Press USA.

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perhaps a few expensive lessons may be learned along the way (failures of previous business ventures etc) but this is a necessary requirement. That is, you must accumulate your knowledge

and gather the lessons from the past. Inside your mind is a huge repository of what you know. Granted, you may forget it at times but it’s still there.

When you open your mind to learn you are testing the validity of that knowledge and you are exposing it to see if it’s useful or not. Generally people get nervous around experiential learners

because they are testing the validity and usefulness of knowledge. These are the kind of learners that are always testing the boundaries of what’s possible and what’s not. Constantly they are working to gain new insights to add to their knowledge repository so they can have a better understanding of what is going on. They know what works and what doesn’t. This is one of many key reasons why organizations should not get rid of those who have been around for a long time; they know things other people don’t. How quickly do new businesses look at the business model over common sense all because they want more profits for shareholders. What about organizational effectiveness? What about keeping a good corporate knowledge repository that all in the

organization can draw from? What boggles the mind is that people hide behind business process reengineering and their concepts of what they would like business to be about when getting rid of corporate knowledge. Each person is useful and what they know could add more value … if you would let them.

When learning you need to build on what you know, be prepared to destroy it and when required change it. Don’t confuse the goal of learning when your personal pride and desires. You must be open minded and be building on what you know honestly not simply sticking to a track you know isn’t going to work because you are too proud to let it go. The attitudes required for learning are going to be discussed in the next chapter. Therefore as you learn you have to have one final thing in place and that is the ability to reflect.

Reflection
When you look into a mirror you see an image of yourself looking back. This reflection of yourself represents your physical self and it’s you there you are looking at. When learning should always have a mirror to look into to ‘reflect’. Ever heard theses two sayings: You can’t see the forest for the trees? Everyone is a genius in hindsight? Sometimes we get so caught up in what we are

learning that we haven’t taken the time out to reflect to see if what we are learning is relevant or can be used. When we reflect we think back retrospectively to check through what we have learned to see if we can contextualize it by thinking through it. When you reflect on a past experience, the www.lukehoughton.com 24

thought produces both emotions and your mind reasons through it. For example, if you were involved in a car accident you will reflect through it and look at it to see if you could have done something different. The truth is you did what you did – what can you learn from that experience – take the lesson and move on. Don’t spend you days getting stuck staring at the trees, see the ‘bigger picture’ extract what you gained from the experience and move on.

Reflection is a powerful force; it allows us to go back in time to have a look at situations in all kinds of ways. It allows us to think through the past, collect lessons and gain experiential insights into what has happened and most importantly move forward. Imagine if our government gained insights into things like poverty and passed them on to next government. What would the condition of our world be like? If the mistakes of the past we keep making were learned about and improved through reflection, the chances are the world would be a much better place to live in. Reflection is really about taking the lessons from each learning experience, adding to the knowledge you have and then moving on the next learning experience.

Lost Children International is an organization set up to aid parents who have had their children into stolen from them and placed in foreign countries. One of the key figures in the organization is Miriam Ali, co-founder and counsellor of the organization, had this to say when she found out the unthinkable had happened to her children8:
“The electric shock jolted my body into rigidity. I couldn’t form a single syllable. I just looked at this man, disbelieving my own ears, because all I could hear was the sound of my own heart thumping, thumping, thumping. Fred had not moved, neither his stance for his expression. Cool, penetrating, superior. He just looked at me as I became further entrapped in my own shell of a body.”

The language here is in a reflective tone and the author is trying extremely hard to emphasise the nature of the feelings she was feeling as she learned that her children had been stolen from her. Notice the use of the descriptive language with things like thumping and electric shock jolted my body. The author is reflecting on how she felt during this time trying to use accurate metaphors describing the way she felt when hearing this horrible news. In a way she is trying to make sense of her feelings she felt through reflecting on how she was at that time and she is trying to communicate to us what it was like. Unfortunately we can sympathise with her but unless we have had that happen to us we will never be able to empathise. The author is making sense of an experience by reflecting on it and telling us what it was like. In ourselves when we learn, we do exactly the same thing. We learn, reflect then go back to learning again. Those of us who don’t

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learn, never reflect and get stuck in the same cycle of learning, over and over and over again!

Our learning is not separate to us because it’s a part of the whole being that makes us up. Therefore, what we choose to learn about and gain insights into is completely controlled by our perspectives and the deeply held assumptions we have about the world. You cannot divorce yourself from the world and the world cannot divorce itself from you. Whatever it is you believe the world to be, whatever well of ideas you are drawing from are merely perspectives and assumptions. The deeply ingrained ideas we have quite often are based on good solid evidence but a lot of the time they are not. There is a funny saying in the academic world, ‘Doing a PhD is like banging your head up against a wall until the wall disappears!’ In the same way, learning through poor interpretations that don’t work is the same as trying to change what you cannot control. If you can’t control it learn a way around it. Think and act in a reflective way by cycling through different ways of thinking and acting.

If you have stopped learning, reflecting, acting and so forth then you have willingly made a choice not to participate in living life anymore and you need to move forward. Reflecting allows us the liberty to make sense of things and move into a new place because it opens up the pathway for change. When we reflect, we consciously think about what has happened and make (hopefully) meaningful change at least possible. As we reflect about what we have learned from our experience we have new insights and as humans we can learn even when it’s not good to do so. Every person in history that ever invented anything good or bad was a reflective thinker. In Miriam Ali’s case her reflection and action lead her to learning which in turn led to establishment of an organisation to help parents with abducted children. Reflection is what keeps you learning and moving forward. It can be humbling and it can make you look stupid at times but ultimately you gain something more value than gold through this … wisdom. When you know what works and what doesn’t then you can help others and share what you experientially know. The following chapter takes these ideas and discusses applying them in real world situations.

Chapter Summary
In this chapter the topic of ‘learning’ was discussed. Three types of learning were introduced: rote or surface level learning, conditional learning and experiential learning. To learn it was argued

that you need to maintain three key things. Firstly, you need to have an open mind which allows you see possibilities. When you have a closed mind you know the answer before you have answered the question and this stops real world learning from occurring because it closes all
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From Without Mercy, Miriam Ali and Jana Wain, Warner Books, UK.

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avenues to learning down to your close mindedness. Secondly, you have to be working from a knowledge repository or have a set of ideas to build upon and perhaps totally eradicate if required. This allows you to build and change what you know about something as time progresses. Finally, the idea of needing reflection was discussed as being very important to the learning process because it creates a way to think through lessons and assimilate them into future experience.

Questions for you to think about:
1. What is something you are really good at? Take a piece of paper and write down what is it you are particularly good at. Done it, good! 2. Now with that same piece of paper – write down how you became good at it – what is the key thing that made you good at it. 3. On the same piece of paper write down the answer to this question: if you had to teach someone to be as good as you what would you emphasise? 4. If could do it again what would you change?

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Skill 2 – Problem Solving Problems as Perspectives
In the haziness of everyday affairs we often are blinded by perceptions, beliefs and hidden assumptions. I have been thinking lately about how much of my life is a problem and how much of it I make a problem. What do I mean? Well consider for a moment that a lot of things we think are real problems are actually not ‘real’ as such. They exist in our heads informing of us that which ‘troubles’ us. As British academic Professor Peter Checkland puts it: an area of concern is something we find to be problematic. Sounds real obvious hey? Think about it for a minute.

The problem of causality
What I have noticed is that people often fail to recognise the difference between how we can cause something to bother us and how others can interfere. Think for a moment about this scenario. You are driving home on the freeway and suddenly a man swerves in front of you nearly taking you out. You react by slamming on your brakes and quickly lose control of your vehicle smashing into a nearby concrete wall. That is a real problem. You have been effected by somebody else’s poor driving. Same scenariobut somebody looks like they are going to cut you off and you react because of what might happen but never actually does. Your thinking caused you to respond not really the other drivers actions… although they were the trigger. In this latter example you can see that often in problem solving situations the real problem is your perception of what might happen. A problem is therefore a perspective that is the difference between what we expect (our point of view) and what actually happens.

The problem of perceptions
Perceptions are as real as reality itself. One might go so far to say that perceptions are reality. Hold on, I hear you say, what I perceive is actually real? No. That’s not what I mean. I mean this: what you perceive to be real becomes real by virtue of the fact that you have perceived it. When you understand or recognise a problem to you it’s real. The effects of it will be as real as if the wind blew the roof right off your house!

So what’s the real problem?
The real problem often is in your head. That’s right. You think something might happen and on the basis of that ‘reality’ you begin making decisions. I do this myself all the time. Ever thought of www.lukehoughton.com 28

avoiding a social event because you might run into so and so and it would be a disaster only to go and find out it wasn’t. This kind of thing can get so intense that you begin seeing the pictures in your mind… day in and day out. You begin to imagine what might happen and sure enough before you know it you are making new plans to navigate around something that is deeply rooted in your mind.

Problems as perspectives
Problems are essentially ways of thinking (perspectives) that reside in our sub-conscious mental structure informing us of reality. You can begin to recognise them by asking yourself questions that expose them (I will talk about how to remove them in a later post). Things like: ‘Do I want to avoid the social event because it will be a disaster or because I am expecting it to be a disaster?’. See, we often build a reality to believe in just so we can make a place for the things we think are a problem. I am going to end this post with a personal story. Before I started my present job I was warned about a member of staff by people I was hanging around with at the time. The people I was with told me that this person (called ‘Bob’ to protect the innocent) was not to be trusted and would rip me off. So believing what I was told I avoided them like the plague. However, I was assigned to work with Bob and found Bob to be helpful, courteous and nice. When I eventually told Bob what I was warned about… Bob told me she was worried about me because of the people I was hanging around! Essentially none of this was ‘real’ but it made for a ‘reality’ that become so real that two people were made to feel very uncomfortable and acted out of these beliefs. The real problem was the perspectives we had. In closing today I want to encourage you to begin to look into your own life for limited perspectives. Once you see them… make a note of them and slowly begin to change the way you see things. I will write more on this so why not subscribe to my feed to see what I have in store. Thanks for reading!

Sometimes a logical approach just won’t do: My problem with traditional ways
One the greatest literary caricatures of the last 100 years is Sherlock Holmes. The image of the pipe bearing detective with an eye for the most indiscriminate detail is burned firmly into the minds and hearts of thousands of people. What I am interested in today is to talk about the reasons why Sherlock Holmes and the majority of western thinking about problem solving is indeed wrong. Not-so-elementary my dear Watson

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Sherlock Holmes often cautioned Watson not to come to a conclusion about a crime until he had the ‘facts’. Watson was framed as the bumbling detective who never really put the pieces of the puzzle together. Holmes, the figure of the rational/logical detective espoused ad nausem in today’s crime shows, always reasoned through available facts, evidence and such things. Watson was always leaping to conclusions that were off the cuff, spontaneous and available. Putting the pieces together in a logical fashion as Holmes did actually is not all to dissimilar to Watson’s approach. Consider for a moment that we all making meaningful gestures at what we think problems are all the time. As we come to understand the situation we are faced with we immediately think of solutions. Chances are that we come to the conclusion that problems we faced have many ‘not-so-elementary’ elements that are not obvious. Conjecturing is one way we can actually tease out the not so obvious and begin to build better solutions. Reasoning Versus Conjecturing? These two practices are not mutually exclusive. As a matter of fact they are deeply connected. For a moment think of a problem you have. Tell me what’s the problem? I guess you have either spoken out loud and said ‘the problem is…’. Have you ever watched the news and a story caught your attention enough for you to whine about it? Say it was about the rental crisis. What’s the problem… well I guess you could say the problem is a lack of housing at a cheap enough price. Immediately you have just conjectured what the problem is and now we have available to us certain types of conclusions. Whenever you say… the problem is… you are conjecturing (either based on no or limited ‘evidence’). Getting more information may be important so we can reason but the ideas that underpin our reasoning processes are even more important. Facts come after we beginning looking for evidence People often say to me, ‘well this has been my experience.’ I then sit back and wonder why can’t people see that their experience (or the evidence in this case) happened and the facts they have collected are coming from a way of thinking about that experience. Facts are always available. When we conjecture as to what we think the problem is, we begin to look for support for our ideas. NOT the other way round. Human beings are wired up to believe things first then either confirm or deny later. To say that we come to conclusions through reasoning is true to a point BUT the vast majority of our decision making takes place on the back of ideas that have little or no confirmatory evidence. Sherlock Holmes was ridiculing Watson for doing precisely the same thing he was!

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Reasoning comes from somewhere Reasoning comes from a set of underlying ideas. If you think that there is a problem the chances are you may be the only one thinking that it’s so. Contrary to the majority of western thought… the ideas that form the problem take place in the human mind and may not even have support from other people. If you think people are saying nasty things about you… that’s a problem you have conjectured. You will then act on these assumptions, build a new way of defending yourself and even begin treating everyone as a possible threat. Holmes allow the ‘facts’ to speak him as he often said but these facts led to a reasoning process which in turn leads to Holmes conjecturing (taking an educated guess) as to what his problem is. Holmes ‘faith’ was created through the facts which led to certain conclusions as a result. We all do it! It’s not like we are immune to it. It’s just this false consciousness we create whereby we think that we are being ’scientific’ but we are not. Things like faith and belief establish the conjecture or set of ideas and we follow through to a conclusion from there. In concluding this post I would like to add that Sherlock Holmes was right to trust the evidence he found but if you read what he did he used an awful lot of guesswork, theorising, brainstorming and creative thinking. All of which require no so-called ‘evidence’ to lead to conclusions. They are merely ideas that suggest certain kinds of possibilities, concepts that suggest ways of thinking and educated guesses that stimulate the problem solving process. Take a look at your own life and begin to see the conjectures you have floating around in your head. What are you worried about? What makes you fearful? These are nothing more than ideas you have attached your emotions to which in turn creates a new reality for you to believe. Remember, it’ s not the ‘facts’ but where the facts come from that are important.

So how can I know I have a problem
In the world filled with problems there is a great divide between stuff that’s a problem and stuff we think might be a problem. What do I mean? Well consider this: the problem of traffic in this fair city of Brisbane is a problem for me because I have to drive into it every morning when I go to work. To say it was a crisis would be a bit dramatic and probably amplify the thing way out of context. Yet in my experience, people do this all the time. So what I am going to do next is outline some ways you can know you really have a problem. 1. Is this problem an immediate concern

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If the situation at hand is not solved immediately is there a chance that it can be solved later? If it can be solved later why are you so concerned about solving it right now. Why do you want to fix it and why on earth do you want to waste time and energy when other problems could be better solved now. Most people make something that’s an immediate concern where there is no need to do that. The reasons we do this could be because of: personal preference, political reasons, you think it has to be solved ‘right now’ and stuff like that. If the problem is not immediately a concern there is good chance that you are worried about something that may never occur. 2. Are you making something a problem because you want to see it solved Consider your own life and the problems you have at the moment… are you creating new problems to solve because you want to. The reasons why you are doing that might be avoidable. In high times of stress humans fall back into crisis mode and make sense of situations differently than they do under normal circumstances. The consequences of what we are doing when we are looking to solve a problem often forms the area of concern itself. We create the concern so we can solve it. Over a period of time we build up an issue in our minds and then plan out ways to solve it as we create it. Why do we do this… it’s part of being human. 3. What is the evidence that has led you to think there is a problem Evidence can be real (facts) or it can be the stuff in our brain that tells us something is real. Whenever you have come to a conclusion that there is a problem it’s because you have evidence that has lead you to this conclusion. What evidence do you have? Mental evidence… your thoughts? In your thinking process you have created a chain of evidence that links certain types of information together to form a logical conclusion. The conclusions you have reached are well thought out and logical based on rational (or in some cases irrational) thinking. To test this ask yourself what makes you think what you are thinking. The conclusion (problem) was reached through evidence (thoughts) what thoughts make you think there is a problem. Once you have isolated these… write them down and study them. Is it really that serious? 4. If there is a problem is there also a solution Believing is intrinsic to human affairs. We find a problem it’s usually connected to certain kinds of solutions. When we look at a problem, in our mind is a subtle idea for a solution, that we have been mothering to the point where we are now finding a problem to birth our solutions. In the seventies they called this the garbage can of decision making. A problem can often be identified by overzealous people looking to test a ’solution’ that is a personal pet project. Don’t be one of these people. As I will discuss in a later post problems and solutions are inexplicably related. www.lukehoughton.com 32

One final question to ask yourself as you look for problems is the question of meaning. What meaning does the problem have? If it’s a problem with a certain degree of importance (i.e. marriage) then you will be blinded by the all too familiar problem of being human. That however, is another post for another day. For now, think… do I really have a problem?

Breaking out of old mindset and the logic box
A cardboard box is great for storing things isn’t it? Does it help you think? NO. It’s a square storage box for you to put stuff in. In the same manner that the box is used for storage so do we store things in mental boxes. When it comes to ideas you can create the form they take by building logical structures that you think represent reality. Take for example your concept of work? What is it? Do you think you work to get money or you get money because you work? That is a logic box. The truth is you are being paid because you have something of value to offer someone else. If you conceptualise work in a box you will say: ‘Well I have to do it.’ No you don’t! You must begin to break out of the logic box you have built and make new ideas work for you. Starting thinking of yourself as adding value because that’s why you were hired. I think of the logic box as a set of ideas that you use to define something in a rigid, non-flexible logical way. Consider the following examples:

Well that is just the way it is…
Why do we accept things the way things are… well that’s just the way it is? No that’s a box. Things are the way they are because we made them that way and continue to agree that’s an acceptable way of doing things. Take poverty for example. A problem that is worldwide. Is there enough wealth in the world to fix this problem? I would argue there is more than enough yet the problem is still there. Why is it still there? Corruption? Bad politics? Greed? There is no one answer that makes complete sense.

It’s been this way for years… it’s better the devil you know than the devil you don’t…
This is a logic box that is really saying… I don’t have the courage to make the changes and I would prefer to live with the devil I have rather than the devil I don’t. I would prefer for the devil to be gone. Why live with the devil? It takes just the same amount of fear to fail as it does to succeed. Why not take a step out there into the big beyond and try it? Things could get better as they could get worse. If they do get better then you will have gained something and if you make a terrible mistake you will also have gained something. See my previous post on learning from your past www.lukehoughton.com 33

mistakes. Don’t settle for what the population in general settle for mediocrity… do what you know to do. Break that sucker!

Things are never going to change…
Really never? They will change if you begin to make steps towards making them change. You don’t build a great building overnight. It starts with a vision and you then build it step by step until the thing is complete. We have this terrible idea that things we have are simply never going to change. If you think it will never change… it will never change. If you begin to think change is possible… then it will become possible. This not some mysterious notion. Consider this, when you are looking for a new house to live in what do you notice in the television shows you see… things you like in a house. In like manner if you set your mind on something you will begin to explore possibilities, seek new avenues of thinking and eventually make small steps towards change.

That’s just what I believe…
People somehow have gotten this idea that what we believe is static. It’s almost as though changing our perspective is so hard that we would rather live with a worse explanation of what we believe that using a better one. Why do we do this? There are many reasons why but I think a major factor is that we simply grow comfortable in the ways in which we create things in our mind. We get so comfortable that we would rather hurt ourselves by believing something that’s just there rather than changing perspectives to a better healthier belief.

This is just the way I am…
The picture you carry around of yourself is what you will think, speak and act to whoever is listening at any given time. This inbuilt image will be with you for the rest of your life and if you don’t do something to fix it… you will find it dominating you until you die. If for example, you belief you are destined to fail, then the chances are you will make decisions that will make this a reality. If on the other hand you believe you will do well, you will make decisions in accordance with this belief. This doesn’t mean you will do well because you believe BUT that belief will reside in you and when opportunities come along you will know how to recognise them. These are all versions of the logic box… ways of thinking that are put into little boxes for us to interpret. Another common one I have come across is found in the media. I call this a false dichotomy. Say you are debating a divisive issue like euthanasia. Immediately you think of the two moral high grounds for the issue… pro or con. In reality this is a false dichotomy because there may be other solutions rather than yes or no. By taking an extreme stance you automatically exclude the www.lukehoughton.com 34

possibility of new and innovative solutions. There is nothing wrong with taking a stand for things you believe in… but there is something VERY wrong in creating ideas to believe in and then not changing them when the situation demands it. The tendency towards logical solutions in our thinking hinders our creativity because it forces us to make boxes. When we do this we naturally exclude alternatives which in any field is a dangerous practice. There are a few ways I have found that break the logic box and I will discuss these in another post later in the week. In the meantime consider this: what things in your life have you boxed in? Family? Friends? Work? In any case you will not be able to see the problem until you begin questioning it, turning it over in your mind and looking at it from different angles. Start today! In a previous post I talked about the concept of the logic box. You might remember them as limiting belief systems that we form to make sense of things. They become a box when our thinking is stalled because we can’t move past the logic we have placed in our minds. Today I want to show you four techniques for breaking out of stale thinking patterns and how to break the logic box.

1. Conjecturing
In a previous section I talked about why Sherlock Holmes is wrong when it comes to real world problems solving. In this article I introduced the art of conjecture. A conjecture is an educated ‘best’ guess that allows me to put on another way of thinking than I might be used to. If you are stuck on a hard problem and you cannot see your way out of it… try guessing something that you haven’t thought of previously. The way to do this is to offer an idea that is a guess that will help you to see things differently. When we conjecture, we immediately think of new solutions we haven’t thought of previously. Our logic box problem might be a lack of finance. Automatically you are locked in to a way of thinking that is very limiting because you will say, “well I need more money”. Hence you are now locked in a box you can’t get out of. To get out conjecture your way. So you don’t have enough money… start guessing at other things that might be causing the lack of money. Why don’t you have enough money? Conjecture a different problem. Take a guess: I am not happy because I don’t have enough money therefore I need to find happiness in lack. This would lead you think about happiness apart from materialism which in essence gets rid of you having to need money to be happy. Try another way of thinking: I recognise that I don’t have enough money therefore I must find ways to add more value to myself through different activities. Yet another example: My way of getting money is inadequate… I need to invent different ways to source finance. And so. This conjecturing process moves you from focusing purely on a unsolvable paradox into thinking about new ways to solve the issue. Conjecturing allows me to put on a new way of thinking so I can shift

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perspectives and assess the problem from a new light. A new assessment suggests new solutions and leads to new strategies for taking action.

2. Assumption/Perspective Shifting
Think for a moment about the things you believe. You hold some things very deeply in your heart and build assumptions based on these things. For example I believe in God. Now, I have built beliefs on top of these assumptions that I am extremely happy with. I believe in the so-called tenants of the Christian faith. These are my assumptions which are built on the back of what I believe. I am aware of these assumptions and I realise how to navigate them. Whenever I am faced with something external to me (like an opposite opinion) I have to recognise that as somebody else’s assumptions. When faced with a paradox (logic box) I need to change my assumptions in order to move forward to solutions. My hidden assumptions are telling me there’s a problem. I need to learn how to shift these assumptions. One way I have found to do this is become the devil. What do I mean? Look at the situation and ask yourself this question: What if the opposite of what I assume is true? Just the other day two people I work with were in loggerheads over an issue. After an uncomfortable week I thought: ‘I am going to resign’. Just yesterday I learned I was assuming there was a problem when really there wasn’t. The ‘loggerheads’ was an assumption about what somebody else thought I should be doing. When I told them the truth the assumptions changed and the perspective they had shifted. For me at least this makes it more bearable to work. At least for now! Remember, conjecturing is ‘believing first’ and then seeing what solutions arise as a natural flow on. Built into that process is a view of what we think our problem is likely to be and solutions flow out of problem identification. Recognise our ‘perspective’ in the problem is important because it shapes what we think issues are. Quite often you will find that you thinking something in your head that is simply not a problem … you just assume it is.

3. Brainstorming
Brainstorming is a ‘free flow’ of ideas. You can also think of this as the creative process in action. When we look at a problem and begin to come up with new ideas new solutions will emerge. From this process you can shift to lateral ideas that will help you tremendously. Brainstorming really involves the rapid interchange of ideas from different angles in a group or individual setting. I like this process because done properly it can surface hidden assumptions, challenge stale thinking and suggest (quickly) new and innovative things that can be done. It breaks out of defensive reasoning and helps us to learn. Read this to find out more.

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4. Thinking about what generates the paradox
Traditionally we might have called this ’systems thinking‘. This is where we look towards things that ‘generate’ what we see by looking at the higher order process. Remember, you may be the victim of somebody else’s assumption making so carefully think about your situation and begin to recognise what’s happening. Where I work there are things put in place by management that make my job difficult. Paperwork by the mound for example. There is really nothing I can do about this yet it will cause me problems. Yet I have inherited this problem by nature of what I do. This is still something ’systemic’ that is being generated around me. In such a case I need to recognise these things and learn to adapt to them rather than flow against them. To be honest, there are some things you just cannot change. So how does this relate specifically to the logic box? There are bigger picture things that form these things in us a lot of times and sometimes breaking them takes ‘bigger picture’ actions. What we do about these things takes place more on a group level than an

organisational one. This is where you need the support of others working with you. That however, takes time, planning effort and an agreement of strategic values which I have discussed before. Breaking out of harmful thinking patterns is a much bigger topic than this post. I would like to point out that if you are serious about this kind of thing then I would recommend you read a lot more and if needed seek the advice of a professional. I do not wish to oversimplify the issues I have spoken about here by saying that these are ‘generally’ applicable because that’s not true. I can tell you however, that doing these things, especially the fourth point, is extremely important. They have helped me and I hope they help you.

10+ ways to solve a problem

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A lot of people don’t realise that there are many different ways to solve a problem. The picture above is what we have come to recognise as the traditional linear problem solving process. I discussed this is my first two podcasts. This traditional method works under the assumption that we have limited amounts of information and life is fairly linear. Think about it. We look at the problem, we study it’s causes and find solutions to implement. Very simple. Life isn’t so simple. What about problems where the immediate causes are not known. What if the wrong problems have been identified? What if they are a subset of a bigger more messy problem? You get the picture.

Is there more than one way to solve any problem?
Of course! We can think about this from several different points of view. Everybody knows we can think differently and that has results right. So it stands to reason that thinking differently about a problem will also reveal layers of the problem from different vantage points like this diagram below shows us:

This basic overview shows the basic argument I am putting forward here. Problems are tied to perspectives. Okay let’s complicate this a little further and add in even more viewpoints from the main ones I have isolated here. See below:

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You can see by just expanding this diagram a little bit I have increased the amount of incoming perceptions of the problem. There are many ways to think about a problem and (at the very very least 10) that I know off. So here are 10 ways to solve a problem:

Resolve it
Most common approach this is where you reach a given conclusion with known information. It’s based on the Newell and Simon model shown above. Generally when we speak of working things out we are talking of accommodation and comprise. This is common in universities when power players bash heads. This is what I think of a lose-lose situation because in general you have to give something up in order to move forward with the problem.

Absolve it
This means you do nothing. Just wait and see what happens. Personally this is only one step better than turning a blind eye. Yes, I think this is a cop-out.

Dissolve it
This is following the art of problem solving by Russell Ackoff and changing the conditions (or the higher order concepts) to make the situation different so the problem can’t occur. I discussed this a while ago.

Solve Another Problem
Sometimes when we solve problems we forget that there are perceptions that tie these things together. We can actually think, ‘what else is this related to in our mind,’ and trace back to that issue and solve it. It’s shorthand form of problem dissolving

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Shift the boundary
This has to do with problem identification. Change the boundary you have set around the problem and new perspectives will open up that show you faults in your thinking.

Change your mind
When you solve problems by changing your mind, you are doing various combinations of the things I have already spoken of above. In this way of solving the problem you decide to identify a different problem. Most helpful in political situations because it can help you see things that you would have missed otherwise.

Mediation
Mediation is where you involve a third party to help resolve a conflict. Using someone else to help is a great way of expanding available perspectives, concepts and ideas. Try it, it works great. In situations where negotiation is required or a mediator may be called for. In Australia if you want to bail out of a marriage it is now compulsory that you do it through a mediator.

Use mathematics
Polya was a great example of this. He had a formula for every possibility modern day statistics (i.e. regression) and operations research (i.e optimisation analysis) are examples of this approach

Use a decision support tool
A decision support tool is an electronic decision making aid that cycles through various scenarios to help you reach a conclusion. The link above has a comprehensive list of tools you can use.

Flip a coin
The easiest way to solve a problem, provided you are after a yes/no answer. Flip a coin heads you do X tails you do Y. Simple.

Use the ‘decision maker’
Early on in my marriage my wife had a problem making decisions (who am I kidding she still does) so someone bought her a decision maker. It was a piece of wood with a yes on one side and a no on the other. Absolutely brilliant.

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Phone a friend Every watched who wants to be a millionaire? They have this segment where you can phone a friend for advice. Gaining some perspective from others is an excellent way to understand how to shift through problems to a conclusion. As you do this you open up new channels of thought that make your way clearer. Gaining a perspective on these things is important because your thinking may be what’s wrong with the problem. Remember that a problem is a mismatched expectation. You can change your expectation and your problem won’t exist but doing so is a lot harder than it seems. We have a saying in problem solving/strategic thinking research… ‘change your perspective change your problem’. Yes but how? Ahh, it would be nice to live in such a world wouldn’t it? Summary In this chapter I have covered the basics of problem solving including several ways to solve problems. Now it’s your turn.

1. What’s a problem you are currently contending with? 2. What’s the answer you think you are looking for? 3. Take the problem and take it to five people: What did they say about it? 4. Write down five things you could do about it that aren’t related.

The perspectives we form over the duration of our lives are the building blocks for the way in which we deal with life problems. The cornerstone of anything we believe is based on a perspective or in simpler terms an illusion we have created. Simply stated: life problems do not exist without a person there to give it meaning. It’s true that we may inherit or have characteristics given to us that we are not responsible for, genetically speaking of course. However, I argue strongly that most people create their own problems by the things they believe.

A very learned colleague of mine once said to me that if I had the problem of trying to change a tyre on the highway and I couldn’t get it changed, then I would have a real problem. On the other hand, if I change the tyre and get hit by a car while I am changing that tyre does the problem still exist? No, now that I am dead the problem no longer exists. I am on my way to glory now, no need to worry about the tyre something new has come into my perspective. Therefore, a perspective is the view of something you think is a problem.

Wait a minute, I hear you say, that sounds a lot like the way in which I see things determines how I will shape my world. Yes, if you put the book down now that would be a key lesson. However, that’s not really what a perspective is. A perspective can be likened in the natural world to looking through a window out at something in the real world. The world exists, sure enough, at least as far as we know it does. There is little evidence to suggest otherwise. In like manner the way in which you build things in the essence of your mind is directly related to what you think is likely to be problematic and what you will think is an issue to you.

For example, we are told constantly that a positive attitude is good, have a positive attitude. My response to this is not why but how? How can I be positive and what perspectives do I currently harbour that are related to why I now have a negative attitude? Most people do not go beyond surface learning past the conditions they have in their minds to the substance of what they believe. This substance is the perspective you have. The substance of what you hold dear to you is the core part of your perspective and this shapes and builds the world which you now inhabit. There are probably some very good reasons why I have a negative attitude. They are not related to my outside world though because at heart I know these are those things that I believe. What I believe in the inner part of my being are the deep substantial things that I use as the building blocks of the www.lukehoughton.com 42

world around me.

A perspective is not an actual thing but it does result in actual things. A racist is someone who holds deep down perspectives that are racist. The way they act towards those on the outside of their own culture, is not determined by anything other than there perspective. That is not real in the sense that a chair is real. It is however, real in the sense that it has real observable effects on that person’s behaviour towards people of opposing cultures and ideals than their own. That racism exists in their mind as a way of seeing things that distorts unfairly the view of those of opposite skin colour or race. This is one of the most hideous monsters of humankind that we can do this to each other but these differences are deep rooted perspectives that are ingrained in us.

In Alfred E. Cliffe’s book Let Go and Let God, he tells the story of people who lived in a time when it was thought that tomatoes were poisonous. Those that ate those tomatoes died. In the same book he also tells the story of people, who under hypnosis, were told that they had horrible burns on their hands only to have blisters emerged on their hands as a result. A perspective is substance, not necessarily the actual substance of things like humans are made from, or the substance of the air but those things that form our perceptions are indeed substance. They are real and they affect the way in which we deal with our life problems. The famous Stanford Experiment shows that perspectives are formed when certain conditions exist. For those who were called ‘guards’ they took on the perspective of guards and those that were prisoners take on the perspective of prisoners.

It’s therefore important to recognise that we have perspectives about things that we think are useful to us. A perspectives shapes our understanding of things and tells us how to interpret it. These

things are not ‘out there’ as such, although they are, they are built into us. The way we dress, who we marry the lives we end up living are the result of our perspectives. Some people have caught onto to this and have created things like The Secret for example that puts forward the idea that a change of perspective (to a more positive mindset) will give amazing results. All these people are drawing on is the idea that humans recreate the things they believe in on a continual basis. In other words, if you are looking for something positive chances are it’s already there, you can’t see it because you have been drawing from a well of negativity. Sometimes the opposite is true – when you look at something from a purely positive point of view you will see positives and negative things can come along and you may not even be aware of them, hence cults form.

It’s important to note your own perspectives and the things you deeply believe because these frame the world you live in and give it meaning. Others hold different opinions about the world they live www.lukehoughton.com 43

in and have a different perspective. What is it you believe about work? Remember you are what you think you are and what you think shapes the way you relate to the outside world. What happens when we apply our way of thinking to the world around us? The Logic Box Whether we know it or don’t I believe most of us are creating logical patterns in our minds all day long about why things are the way they are and without really considering it. The most common occurrence I come across in my job is this: “The problem is…” then automatic experts are formed. Nobody I have ever met does NOT do this. We all have boxes that we place what we believe reality is about in our brains. The problem is precisely what you think it is, because it’s your own issue and you have the keys to perceiving it and unlocking it. In other words, a problem is what you

think it to be because you are the one interpreting it. You build the frame that houses the problem.

Consider for a moment the things you believe that you heard on television. The news reporter would have said one day, ‘there is a rental crisis’ and if you were renting your immediate reaction is panic. Then, like a good little ant go to work and build the idea of a ‘rental crisis’ into the mainstream by telling someone. They tell someone and they tell someone until before you know it, there is a rental crisis. Trends often start this way and continue because people perpetuate them, there is no other satisfactory answer. How can a trend sustain itself if people aren’t hopping along for the ride for it only exists in the minds of people?

People made the world what it is today not ‘reality’ not the ‘system’ we made this world. It was us our beliefs and our perspectives. The Logic Box is when you take the world to be something that you think it is. You box the world into your logic and your way of thinking without considering alternatives.

I often hear people make remarks about the conditions of work (being in a Western university) and wonder is there really a problem? That’s a terribly conservative thing to say but I wonder: if the conditions magically changed and all of a sudden BLAM we had the best working conditions in the world would we logically order there world any differently? Whenever you box the world to fix your way of thinking you automatically exclude all other perspectives. Moreover, when I favour one fundamental position over another I create this monstrous idea that I and only I possess the ultimate truth. Am I God?9 Do I see all and know all? How can I say then that I know it all? All I have access to is my own way of seeing things which could be wrong.
9

The C. West Churchman author of the Systems Approach (1969), Basic Books, USA, called this ‘God’s eye view’.

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The way in which you construct a situation in your mind, may not be the way it happened at all. These perspectives act like blinkers that make us see the world in a certain way. Stop for a minute and think about this question: Do you believe there is a God? Often, when I ask people this question they tell me they are an ‘athiest’ or an ‘agnostic’ and believe in that way of thinking. If you are a believer what makes you that way? What are the reasons for your belief? For me personally, I do believe there is a God. Is it because of my upbringing that I choose to think about the world this way or is it for other reasons? I justify my belief in God by saying this: my personal experience tells me there is a God. You may argue, my personal experience tells me there is no God and it’s a silly concept. Both views are ways of ordering events and happenings in life and ways of understanding life problems.

In theological circles there is an on-going debate between those that hold to free will (God leaves it all up to us to make choices to accept or reject) and those that hold to pre-destination (the view that God predestines all things). For centuries people have vigorously defended positions that they believed were right on the basis of the teachings in the bible. Both create solid defenses for their position.

Each has battle lines drawn about the nature of God and what he is like but each are coming from a distinct perspective and create a way of thinking about God that is essentially man made. Whenever you find a position you desperately want to believe in and someone demands evidence you can always find it if you look hard enough. My response to such a debate is this: is there a

third position where both can co-exist or not exist at all (yet another perspective)? Why can’t God predestine and give us all choices to make at the same time, why does He have to be limited to our logical boxes?

Another area where I frequently come across this kind of logically boxing is in a great variety of general conversations. People will often frame something in a certain way in order to give you a way to interpret it. For example, at the time of me typing this there is a sign that says, ‘Casual Academic Work: Rite of Passage or Road to Nowhere,’. Why does it have to be either? Why can’t it be both? Why can’t it be neither? We are being forced to make a choice where previously a choice was not necessary. That’s called framing10. The media in this country participate in this kind of thing all the time. The news is framed to be read in a certain manner. One time was up early watching breakfast television when the presenter decided to attack the then minister for

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education on university funding. One of the statements he made was related to the rising of HECS (Higher Education Contribution Scheme) fees by twenty-five percent. The presenter said

something along the lines of: ‘what about all of that money academics get from consulting.’ I immediately thought – what money?

Sure there are some professors I know do make some money from consulting but on the whole most don’t. This was a frame and in the education environment I am in I don’t really have any reward for consulting. If I do it the university takes the money and puts it into research funds which they control. It’s not like I can then go and spend that money on my ‘lavish’ academic lifestyle. This was a frame. Another example I hear all too often today is about ‘getting into the house market’. I have purposely asked people how to do this for a long time, wanting to be a home owner. So the question goes, ‘how do I get into the house market?’ It’s a frame because there are only a certain amount of plausible answers: ‘get a mortgage, like I did.’ Well, ‘how do I do that? I don’t meet the criteria?’ No answer. Framed questions have logically straight forward answers which result in only one or two known interpretations. If you create the idea that something is so – you have built a nice little box for it to live in. How do you know for sure that it is that way?

When I got my first job at KFC the people there taught me how to work the machines to make fried chicken. I didn’t need to know anything else. I wasn’t taught to argue for fair conditions, to build a union or how to make machines to cook chicken, all they wanted of me was to make it. I was framed or put into a logic box. If grew into something else in that job I might have had a shot at management but that’s not what was expected of me in that frame. I was told to make chicken, so I made chicken! When I came to work with people and study messy problems I realized that I had often created boxes for people to fit in. Destroy the box!

A box tells you what to do and how to think. Anyone who says this is the way it is, often just have learned to accept something that they think can’t be changed. It’s a logic box. perspectives. They are just They are

Perspectives are those things that we believe the world ‘to be’.

mechanisms that generate belief systems in the clockwork of our mind and cause us to interpret things and form our way of seeing. If we are into boxing things into what we think should be, you may find that it simply doesn’t fit. A cautionary note here would be to suggest that you do not

create the world through your own eyes and make it want you want it to be because that would make you God. The world and people in the world make us believe that things are the way they are by what they say and how they act. For example, in business schools we never teach on the use of
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See Erving Goffman’s (1974) Frame Analysis: an essay on the organisation of experience

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emotions and how that affects decision making.

We have researched it and we acknowledge it but our Greek systems of logic and tendency towards the over simplistic definitions of cause and effect make us interpret problems as if they were logically defined. Life, for the best part, does not make a whole lot of sense. To train people to think in a way that does not serve them is the same as sending soldier out to battle with a baguette. On the hand to see the logically links between things is good in science and thank God for it but in the world of people it cannot suffice. A logic box causes us to see links between things that may When we structure the things that we

be more complex than a simple ‘this causes that’ mentality.

experience through a logic box that will make us express the problems we have in a certain way and therefore give them meaning to us. This will be discussed at greater length in the chapter on Problem Expressions. Perspectives: Windows of the soul

A core idea of the Logic Box is the perspective. Whatever your perspective is, even if you are not aware of it, will create the world you exist in for you. That is not to say that you can make up an idea and believe then it will be so. If that were the case then I would be flying or traveling backwards through time to tell myself not to make certain stupid decisions I have made over the years. A perspective is something you have inside of you that makes you see things outside as if they were the way you think they should be. The late Rev. David Chilton once said that people often create doctrines of the bible by reading it through their own point of view rather than reading what it actually says. The same is true for what we think reality is. Logically, you may believe that the world runs and actually works in a specific way but you do not have access to all the available perspectives and you certainly are not able to create a platform for analysis based on your own point of view. These are assumptions grafted onto the world that map the way you see and they shape

the way you act.

Assumptions
Every perspective that is offered to us is derived from an assumption. An assumption, is something we think is the case. When the invasion of Iraq took place it was a commonly held perspective that it was for WMD (weapons of mass destruction). This was based on the perspective that they were actually there. Later on we found out that they weren’t actually there. There was an assumption that created a perspective which led to actions that have in essence cost lives. In Australia, England www.lukehoughton.com 47

and the USA the leaders of the nations have suffered tremendously and at the time of this writing at least one of them has been forced to step down.

So then… what is reality?
Philosopher Roy Bhaskar uses a concept of reality I find particularly interesting. It’s based on the idea that we can think of reality as being thought to exist. I am not talking about a subjective reality which has become the popular rhetoric of the day. I am speaking of a reality that could very well exist… a concept which we can call putative (speculated) existence. Some people who subscribe to this view call this a model of causal efficacy or in plain English… reality is thought to exist. Personally I think that reality is a concept that is meaningful to explore and philosophers, bloggers and everyone else has a definitive opinion on what reality is said to be. What I felt I should talk about today is the speculated version of reality which I think is a much better way of understanding life.

Objective versus Subjective
Overall I have found that two versions dominate (broadly speaking) the area of discussions on reality. The first is the idea that the world is solid and everything can be explained down to a known set of rules or principles. We can call this objective reality because it means that reality is fixed and immovable because it’s sustained by laws, principles, guidelines and so forth. Reality in this view is all about understanding how things work so we can explain them through a simplistic version of things. This is by far and away the most dominate thinking pattern of this age. Just ask anyone a question about something and you will see simplistic cause and effect come out. I think that people are in search of answers and in looking for truth stumble at a simple form of what is really happening to them or worse what they have been educated to believe. In the natural world we can see patterns emerge from nature, study them and form objective theories about the nature of things. In the social world doing so has proven to be quite difficult.

Subjective versus Objective
The subjective view of reality is really about understanding it through a particular conceptual frame or way of seeing. The subjective view of reality deems concepts to exist that are found useful to help in understanding things or ideas that are meaningful to help structure the ultimately complex and mysterious social world we find ourselves in. It’s really not about saying that nature is subjective… most discussions I have read are speaking about how we use concepts to map causality onto the world. Overall, I would say that someone who subscribes to this view would look at reality

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and say, “there is no set of laws and principles that govern things only better or worse ways of seeing and explaining things.” This is a view that a lot of my academic colleague subscribe to and has become the foundation of a lot of popular thinking around the way things operate (i.e. the secret). The subjective view encompasses the idea that all we have to see things is a lens or conceptual structure that helps in explaining how things work.

Problems with the subjective view
While I think the subjective view of social reality is interesting and more than likely the best explanation of things so far as I can tell, there is a troubling aspect of the subjective view of reality that I think is often overlooked. Everything that we can see and understand started from somewhere. I do not wish to enter into a first cause argument here so put down your rocks, what I mean is: everything which we know and have come to understand had it’s beginning in something. In a social sense, that which we have come to accept is built on the foundation of something else. Our western education processes have been built on the backbone of logical thinking that is severely limiting. The logical way of seeing things is but one of many “thinking hats” that we can use to understand things. This logical way of thinking that has given birth to the most harsh form of rationalism subverts any other kind of thinking that disagrees with it. Often it does not acknowledge that there are different points of view that people have which leads to different conceptualisations of the truth. The subjective view forces us to accept a version of reality that is open to interpretation which is good but on the other hand excludes other possibilities as well. By saying I accept the subjective view of reality, you’re actually saying that this is what I think things to be. When you take the objective view of reality (i.e. based on a scientific view) you are actually saying this is what I think reality is. In your mind, objective thinking is nothing more than a thought process and subjective thinking is exactly the same. Either way you are saying that reality exists be it as a set of laws (objective) or as something to be interpreted differently by individuals (subjective). On the extreme we have scientists who will not except something they cannot explain apart from causal laws and on the other hand we have people who will admit reality is totally constructed through language and thinking. The problem I have with the subjective view is that I have to ignore the objective elements of the world. I have to commit to a concept driven view of reality in which ‘frames’, language processes and thinking patterns are the only way of understanding the way things are. By accepting it, I exclude that there might be something ‘actual’ that is underpinning things. For many reasons I simply cannot accept this point of view, though for reasons I explain later I am highly sympathetic to it.

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A problem with both views
So what makes us believe? If there is nothing ‘real’ as such why do we find it useful to make sense of things? Our minds are wired up in away that we look for causal structures in what we do and map them onto to what we see around us. Yet the causality we find is not in the concepts, it comes from us. That is, we think there is a reality whether we subscribe to a subjective one or an objective one. If I were to say that reality does not exist or that it’s merely a simulation I still have to account for what it’s simulation of. There is still something intangible that makes me think there is a need to explain what I think reality is. Returning again to Bhaskar, his idea of reality is that it’s thought to exist. That is reality is said or conjectured to exist but it’s subjective in it’s perception (we all see it differently) but objective in it’s effects. Here is an example in my life. I really want to buy a house. As an academic I earn peanuts compared to the hotshots in business so I don’t really have a hope. So I have this model of reality in my mind that says, ‘forget buying a house it’s impossible.’ Yet, I still desire to own a house. Here we see the subjective dream for me: ‘I want to buy a house,’ mixed with the objective reality of unfortunate financial circumstances that make it impossible. Now I believe (subjective) that I will get a house but I am forbidden by the current financial status of my household (objective). When I first starting playing with these concepts I drew this concept map:

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Therefore, reality is thought to exist. I think it’s there. It may be that my interpretation of it is faulty but there are certain things that bear down on me that I cannot perceive out of existence. As well, there are causal forces of the economy that no amount of perception can change. That said, I can change my attitude and believe things will improve and undoubtedly they will. But I cannot change the operation of the economy to suit my needs, neither can I control the effects it has on me.

Causal Efficacy (usefulness)
The way I see things is that it’s useful for me to think that certain things exist. Whereas, it’s also useful for me to see some things as being subjective. What somebody thinks about the economy is often subjective because they do not have complete (and who really knows how it all works) understanding. My understanding of most things is primarily related to how I conceive them and build causal maps to make sense of things. There would be no reality for me if I didn’t do this. When I feel hopelessness as the state of economy I am recoginising something about in it that troubles me and causes me to have bad feelings. Yet I can do nothing about the economy (socalled) because it’s there. I can’t wish it away… the broader objectively effecting subjectively created economy is going to REALLY impact me. If I stop working then real effects will be noticed. I can’t not work unless I have some kind of economical nest egg that will support me in this endeavour. It’s simply not the case that it’s all subjective.

Subjectivity as Passive Reality
I submit to you two forms of reality that I think explains the case I am making here. Subjectivity can be thought of as a form of reality that is passive yet can translate into the active form (objective). Bhaskar has a helpful schema in which he explains the objective reality as being generated by something (perceptions for example) which is turn reflects the deep underlying ideas that society is pinned on (subjective). Once these ideas are generated into the observable, the effects they have on people are multidimensional yet objective or put another way objective through many ways. Another example: when I am going for promotion I won’t get it unless I meet certain criteria yet these criteria are a subjectively derived standard. To say that the promotion scheme is merely my interpretation of things is partially the case because I am viewing through my own cognitive biases. That said, these laws are imposed on me as a member of Griffith University and there is little I can do to fix it. If I believe that it has no impact on me then I would be stupid because it does though they are just a model made by people, subjectively speaking.

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Active Reality
It we think of this version of reality as being the one which we observe to be the case, then I think that makes more sense. What is active and imposing causality on me is the rules and regulations of society in general. These are laws. I run a policy course in one of the classes the students were discussing the laws that youtube uses to impose conditions on people in terms of their intellectual property. Ultimately, that intellectual property is something you made… yet they own it. You can do what you like but they own it. That’s real. Try changing your beliefs around that. It’s actively the case. It’s real enough that it can impact you so much that it may even derive you of your income. Facebook had a similar arrangement where you signed over everything you owned as intellectual property to them… just as evil! These active things that impact on us are supported by law and will impact you. We need to recognise them and find ways to navigate past them.

Potential Reality
Here is where it gets interesting. There is a transcending concept of ‘potential reality’ which I have the holographic paradigm people to thank for. Reality that we see generated before us stemmed from some place. It’s supported by people and they are the ones that make it work or not. Each major paradigm shift and revolution is preceded by the dreamers. The potential reality of what might happen one day. Our imagination is incredibly powerful and I think it’s understated terribly in most modern circles. In theological circles Catholics have advocated prayer through imagination, Dr. Mark Virkler talks about it and of course the new age movement have used it in various ways. The imagination allows me to see a potential reality that I may wish to enjoy and I can from this personal vision go about changing my life. Reality is not in the imagination, imagination is in reality. Look at the majority of concepts and inventions that pervade our modern atmosphere. I am thinking of lights. The light bulb first existed in the imagination of the heart before it was a concept that was in active reality. The inventors of it (Edison and Swan) had something of a concept in their mind. Yet it wasn’t their mind that made it so… it was work, money and so on. The potential reality made it possible for the active to follow. I like the term potential because in physics circles it talks about a energy that has yet to be realised in tangible form. Did you get that? A form of energy that is not yet in a tangible form. Yet it’s a form of energy isn’t it? It’s something real. The other day I was reading Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. As a Christian I may not agree with everything he has to say but towards the end of the book I found something very interesting. He spoke about how he used his imagination to build a mastermind group that he could converse www.lukehoughton.com 52

backwards and forwards with. Interestingly enough he created something so special that he began to generate spontaneous ideas from it and it really helped him in his life and work. Others I have mentioned already have received insight by allowing their imagination to take centre place in their life. I would urge you strongly not to ignore this because it’s the building blocks of making change happen in your life. I know of at least person who rebuilt his entire life through using his imagination. It’s so powerful that I am going to write (when I get the time) a post on that topic alone. I won’t mince words here: without understanding the role the imaginative thinking and visualing plays in our lives… you will never be able to understand the concepts of potential reality. So what do I think about reality? I think reality is a useful concept for understanding things and it should not be used to box things down to a certain way of seeing. There is a passive reality: the realm of subjectivity where ideas are mapped onto the world. There is a putative objective reality said to have causes on me that I have no control over. Then there is potential reality. The reality of energy, spiritual energy (negative and positive), being transformed from me into the world around me. On the one hand if reality was 100% subjective then we could all do whatever we wanted with no impact on each other. If it was 100% objective then we could simply follow the laws and it would work for us. I believe in objectivity, I believe in subjectivity and I believe potentiality. These perspectives that we subjectively hold become part of what we think is real. They are so powerful that they govern the way we think and act. So what can we really expect to do with them? We can learn to shift our perspectives gradually and over time watch as we come to form new expectations.

Learning to Solve Problems by perspective shifting
A problem can be defined as a mismatch between what we expect and what actually happens in our lives. As we come to identify problems we find that our problems are often linked to an expectation we have imposed on our surroundings. To take this definition further a problem is better thought of as being an expectation that we have that does not match what we presently experience. This means our present experience is defined by our expectations. Reality, is often not what we would like it to be.

Expectations: What are they?
An often easy out for us to say something like: just don’t have any expectations. Unfortunately this is not possible. An expectation is a desire for something you want to come to pass in your own life. That desire, is as much you, as you are you. Most of the time you don’t even realise that expectation www.lukehoughton.com 53

is there until the heat of the day (circumstances) reveals it. Expectations are deep down desires that I think need to be cultivated, not ignored. In some circumstances, your expectations need to shift or be changed because some of them are poisonous. Ultimately, the problem you perceive is tied to some kind of expectation you have in your life. Now, we can take our definition of what a problem is even further. A problem is an expectation or desire that has does not match what we expect reality to be. The problem does not lie in reality as such, it lies in causal structures we have mapped over reality. Here’s an example.

The man and the flat tyre parable
There was as man who was driving home from work on a rainy afternoon when suddenly his tyre blew out. Angry at the situation the man slowly edges over to the curb and gets out to assess his problem. He studies his problem and doesn’t see the 18 wheeler approaching from behind. He is hit and killed. Now his problem no longer exists. Why? Because he is dead. Problems are perspectives on events that are tied to deep rooted expectations of what we take things to be. Here is another one.

The stock market problem
The CEO of SuperCompany Inc. (sorry burned out at the moment couldn’t think of a snazzier name), walks into his office one morning to a frantic Chief Financial Officer. He says to the lady, ‘My God Chloe, wants the matter, you look like crap?’ The CFO hands the CEO a piece of paper with a media report that the company is going bankrupt due to bad investments in Australian wheat. The CEO takes one look at the piece of paper and throws it in the bin. The CFO is amazed. ‘Why did you do that,’ she asks. He looks back at her and says, ‘That’s not my problem,’ he says, ‘my problem is that we are going bankrupt and you had to tell me via a media report!’ In this example we can see that neither the CEO or CFO were aware of the problem until it was created for them to believe. These are boundary judgments. Those ideas which we create that form rules and expectations of what we think is the case. In this case the company didn’t think it was going bankrupt. How much of what you hear is ‘actually’ the case? There is a reality and you can be sure it will impact on you but it’s a reality of intersecting ideas and thoughts some of which cause great problems (like the internet bubble burst) and some of which cause smaller ones.

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Three ways of exploring a problem by changing your mind
There are three ways I know of problem solving by changing your mind:

Doing nothing
When we absolve a problem we actually do nothing. There are times when a ‘wait and see’ approach is called for. Say you are building an adwords campaign to boost traffic to your website. You select a bunch of keywords and wait. They come back with a little bit more traffic everyday than the amount you had before. A bit more, a bit more and a bit more. Imagine if you grew impatient? You then start to muck about with keywords and ruin the campaign. In this case you should do nothing, observe and then take action if required.

Invoke dialectical processes
When you begin to examine life from many angles you begin to see just how limiting your point of view is. If you are facing a problem you can’t solve. Begin to play the devil’s advocate. Take the heart of the contradiction and expose it for what it really is. I recommend using at least four contradictory ideas to analyse the situation. Let’s go back to our stockbroker example above. What if he said the CFO, ‘I don’t believe the report because I trust your judgement… are we going bankrupt?’ He could have also taken the dreamers approach, ‘Now that I have read this report, I believe it will turn out for our good.’ In turn he could have taken a mathematical approach, ‘Show the numbers is this true?’ Then again he could have taken the view of a seasoned old veteran, ‘Listen to me, there is no crisis, people invent nonsense like this all the time. Put out a statement saying we are not going bankrupt and quote some numbers. People will believe that over some halfcocked media report.’ In short, take what you think the problem is and look at it’s enemy. By teasing out the enemy you will be able to see the faults in your own thinking.

Creative problem solving
Creative problem solving is the hardest and least likely to succeed in a problem solving intervention. This is when you take a brand new idea that hasn’t been tried which removes the old one completely. In this version you solve the problem by changing the expectation on which it’s framed. What? I mean you take the initial expectation of the problem, the idea that the problem is a problem and you begin to move into a new way of thinking that gets rid of the problem. In essence you change the rules of the expectation by shifting the ideas it’s built upon to a new solution that removes the need for the old one to exist. For example, our friend with the tyre problem had a death problem which is a nasty creative solution to his tyre problem. The tyre is the least of his worries. www.lukehoughton.com 55

When people create a problem it’s built on expectations and perceptions. Problems often revolve around what we think is the case. I know managers who will not make decisions because of fear. Fear stops creativity because it blocks the flow of anything opposed to it. You need to begin to create rather than do what you think you should. A creative solution is a new idea that moves the old out of the way. If a market problem emerges it’s because of perceptions. If there is a climate crisis, we have found that through our man-made data, analysis and conversations. If we find there isn’t… it’s exactly the same process. When we change our mind about something new solutions begin to emerge. As we learn to shift the perspectives that hold us back we will change our mind and new more creative solutions will spring up.

Taking the strategic view
Much is made of modern management training in academic circles to which I respond with ha! A lot of the stuff you come across is life cycles this, supply chain that blah blah blah. What troubles me to my guts is that there is not a real lot of quality teaching around thinking strategically. Now, when we hear that term almost always makes you think… oh no not another chess metaphor. Chess is the worst possible metaphor for strategic thinking that I can think of. You know why… because it sucks. Chess is a game with predictable outcomes where if you know all the moves possible you can win. This takes me back to Herbert Simon’s stupid idea that all we need is more information. What? Now, he’s dead we have all the information we could possibly get our hands on and the world is no better off! In fact, the more information we get the worse things become. So how can we move to strategic thinking? Here are five ways to think strategically:

1. Look at something from more than one point of view
When you confronted with a problem you can’t solve find another point of view and use it. Go and ask someone who thinks the exact opposite way to the way you do and ask them what they think. This opposite point of view will tease out what’s wrong with your ideas and will help you to think strategically. Alternatively, deliberately think the opposite way to the way you do right now and notice what happens. When I do this it breaks bad thinking habits and usually good answers come.

2. Look for generative mechanisms.
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generates the social world is people and their thoughts. Thinking and acting on those thoughts creates the world around us. What thinking generates your thinking? What underlies things? To help you get along here I would suggest thinking about it like this: what are the conditions that created this?

3. How are things related?
Remember a rule of systems thinking is to understand the whole in favour of the parts. So look at the situation and ask your self how are the different smaller level wholes related to make the bigger level whole. This means not breaking things down to the level of cause and effect… instead it means looking for the big picture and how the various parts of the picture relate to form it. Consider this picture:

Looks like a bunch of columns eh? Have a closer look… do you see people hiding in the shadows. The whole was obscured by the parts. So it is when you try to think systemically. Don’t study the parts … study the wholes. Look at this picture above and ask yourself what connects together to make it look like that.

4. How are things not related?
One of the misnomers of strategic thinking is that the world is linear. The problem is that you can never predict the way in which the world we respond to things. Consider the outpouring of aid for the Tsunami or the levels of anxiety after September 11. Warranted though they were the depth to which people reacted was overwhelming. Looking for wholes sometimes can make you create www.lukehoughton.com 57

relationships where none really exist. Always seek to explore how things are also unrelated. Lateral thinking is a good example of this. Looking towards something that is unrelated or lateral shifting in systems terms means looking for a new sideways ideas to how things are related.

5 .Think over dimensions
If you consider each part of something as dimensional or as containing the element of another element which contains that element then you may understand what I am talking about here. Interdisciplinary in academic terms is a fantastic example of this. In this case I am working with people from various points of view who are experts in something that I know little or nothing about. Each domain of knowledge is a new dimension that helps me to view a situation through a much bigger multidimensional view. This is the plural version of number one (listed above) and a major requirement for strategic thinking. Knowing the dimensions of what you are dealing with is impossible from just one view because systemically things are related differently on different strategic levels. You can’t know how a car works by driving it … yet if we assembled a team. A driver, the engineer, the factory people, the marketing team, the distributors and so on we could see the dimensions we were dealing with. Learning over dimensions is much more of a challenge because it creates knowledge that’s more complex, more general and heaps more useful than boring old analytical knowledge. This is only five ways to think strategically there are lots more things you can do. I think it’s best summed up this way. What are the conditions (dimensions) that cause this to exist? It’s real so it exists…putatively! Take a strategic view of your job as an example. What is your job? What does your boss think about your job? Is your job related to other people? What is your job not related to? How many dimensions of your organisation does your job effect? Now you are thinking strategically! So what does this have to do with perspective shifting?

Perspective Shifting and Strategic Thinking
As we learn to see the multitude of perspectives from a strategic vantage point we understand the interrelatedness of things. In particular, we can see how other viewpoints engage with ours to create the problems we perceive. As we appreciate the perspectives of others we understand their concerns and we can therefore begin to build meaningful ways of communicating with others. I think this is an essential skill you need to make it. One of the reasons I hold this belief is because many years ago I began teaching people from other countries that held very different views than my own. I long held the belief that I was culturally superior but did so as a hidden assumption. As I got to know other cultures I realized that we are all human beings. I wasn’t able to do this until I www.lukehoughton.com 58

changed my perspective from my old point of view to strategic values that I could build a platform from. In your life you need to be able to see the forest and the trees if you are to make good progress as you move along. You can’t do this unless you are aware of your own strategic values and the values of others. Now you have a go. 1. What are five ways to understand the problem of self-esteem? Find them and write them down. 2. Now that you have 5 ways what made you think they would be good choices? 3. Of the choices which makes you feel the most emotional? 4. If you could understand poverty from the point of view of a rich person what would be one sentence you would use to define it.

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Skill 4 - Creative Thinking
Do you like to create? Creative thinking is one of those things that requires no long boring lectures to work out. To be genuinely creative is to be totally spontaneous. Imagine for a moment that you have been put in charge of your city or town and your first job is to create a solution to the traffic crisis. What kind of solution would be creative? 1. Build more roads 2. Charge more for using the roads 3. Build more car parks 4. Any combination of the above Actually none of those solutions are creative. Why? Well, because they are drawing on the same ideas that we have always used to fix the problem. It’s the first hand solution for goodness sake. A creative idea is something that makes the problem disappear. Why? If it’s not creative then it’s not creating and if that’s not happening then you are recycling through old answers. Notice all of the solutions about are the answers that are immediately obvious. A creative solution is one that makes the old ones obsolete. Here are some tips on how to create: 1. Imagine the answer you could have if you could have any answer 2. If you were able to start from scratch what would you do? 3. Come up with four answers before you understand the problem and write down at least two opposite points of view 4. Conjecture limitless possibilities! Try this on a situation you are facing today and you will find it will kick start your creativity.

Ways to think creatively
Have you ever been stuck to come up with cool ideas? Today I thought that it would be nice to share some of the things that have worked well for me over the past few years. So here goes: 4 ways to come up with cool ideas.

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1. Write (journal) your ideas down There is a lot to be said for the art of writing. One of the most helpful things I have found in coming up with cool ideas is to write about the topic and see what flows out of my pen. Now this is really the free flow of intuition coming out of your pen. I don’t really know why but writing is a really easy way to find new ideas. Try this: take a blank piece of paper (or open up an office document… open or MS variety for you lovers of Bill Gates) and simply start writing about the topic. Those of you who have experimented with journaling before will understand what I am talking about. This is a wonderful way to find new ideas. When you switch off your reasoning process and move to the right side of your brain you will begin to think in a creative manner. Writing stuff down is a great way to do this. 2. Build a mind map Mind mapping for me is a fruitful activity. It’s helps to see your assumptions about an idea right there on the page. I have used many modelling techniques over the years but this one is the simplest and quite possibly one of the best (maybe with the except of rich picture building) techniques available. If you aren’t familiar with it I would recommend reading the wikipedia article. Remember though, you can make more than one and then compare your results. This is also very important! 3. Synthesise This is the art of putting two old ideas together where it was previously thought impossible (roughly speaking). To synthesise means you take one idea and add others to it to see what results. The process of brainstorming is a good example of this. Of course synthesis is flawed because it relies on the premise that you can put two things together and there will be a good result. Clearly this is not so (consider the Pug?). However, sometimes the right amount of synthesis can be a good thing. Adding one idea to another can spark a revolution of creativity which leads to new perspectives not previously available. Try it! 4. Talking to yourself (meditation) In the bible we find the term ‘meditation’ which I think really means talking to yourself or thinking out loud on one concept for an extended period of time and doing so from different angles. I am not sure why this is so but I have to admit when I talk to myself about a topic my creative processes (I would argue intuitive processes) take over. Once I was stuck on a topic for a model I was building for one of my lectures on the Mobile Workforce. I began to think it through and talk about the www.lukehoughton.com 61

concept from every possible angle when suddenly the idea spontaneously formed within me. The students in two classes responded so positively to it I believe most intuitive things are like this. We are often one good meditation session away from the answer! Remember that when you are creating you are building things up from the inner you. Our minds prohibit this in general because of our capacity as humans to build overly large mental structures which form rules for us to live by. I think that when we engage in creativity we are putting the logical process aside so we can create new things to build. That is, when we build things from the inside we are creating things for the outside. I honestly believe our educational processes set aside creativity and intuition as a second order concept. In a later article on faith I will develop this idea further. I hope you have enjoyed this post and I look forward to hearing from you if you would like to add some techniques to the very short list I have here.

How to know you not being creative
How do you know if you are being creative? Today I want to talk about five ways you can check your creative pulse. 1. Staleness Staleness is the problem of being used to creating things that are not working. Ultimately I think we become stale when our lives fall out of balance or something distracts us from what we are supposed to be doing. Staleness is when what we create is not fresh. This can happen for a variety of reasons all of which you need to seek out. Staleness often opens up the door for people to question your ability when really you are just having a bad week. Find out what is causing your staleness. I can almost guarantee it will be pressure of some sort. Find it and get rid of it. 2. Repetition The oft used quote about repetition goes something like this: ‘the definition of madness is doing something over and over again to get a different result’. When repetition emerges out of you it’s because you are finding the same answers to the same problem over and over again. That is, you have not given up your favourite solution yet because you are still applying it to different problems. This sounds counterintuitive but think about it. We often have solutions in mind (i.e. the garbage can model of decision making) looking for problems or decision making opportunities to air those solutions. Repetition often occurs because we think our solutions are sound. If this is you write down the solution you automatically think of in each context. I think you will find over time that

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you are indeed apply the same old ideas unconsciously. To change this you need to perhaps talk to other people or read this or this to help you out. 3. Innovation is not innovative Innovation is a word thrown around a lot. When we innovate we are really changing something slightly or tremendously NOT representing it as something different. In places I have worked (no names) there have been strategic initiatives introduced that looked like something new. Over time you realise that it was just a smokescreen to maintain the status quo. It’s not innovative to keep things the same. If you are being innovative then change must come through on the building blocks of the effort made by yourself and others. Re-presentation as such is not making things new… it’s simply re-presenting the old as if it were new. This is sleight of hand trickery not innovation. To be innovative you must present something that was previously working as improved, better or totally transformed. 4. Ideas don’t make anything better Have you ever noticed how your ideas don’t make anything better? That’s a problem! I have had entire periods of my life in recent times when my ideas simply did not improve anything. This is troubling. Here is where you need what Napoleon Hill calls a mastermind group. You need to find a handful of people you can trust to be honest who will tell you like it is. For me my wife and a fellow by the name of John Beard are the people I turn to. Whenever I talk to them I can know that they will tell me if I am stuck in a rut. If your productivity wains find people you know and trust to help guide you out. 5. Trapped in the logic box Sometimes you are simply stuck for ideas because of wrong thinking patterns. No amount of counsel or otherwise will help you there. I have spoken about how we become trapped in our own ideas here and here. Again, the problem in such cases is our limited perspectives. When we commit to something that we know isn’t helping we trap ourselves in our own logic. In such cases we need a perspective shift to get us out. In all of these things remember that true innovation occurs when we are internally committed to improving things. If we are finding ourselves stuck creatively it can be for reasons as varied as: stress, tiredness, false beliefs and so on. Life becomes very hard to manage when you are stale. It can be terrible when you know you have to do something and you aren’t doing it. The problem is, you will never really have the answers laid out until you try something. When we rely on these predictable patterns of thought and action, all we are really doing is deceiving ourselves instead of www.lukehoughton.com 63

admitting fault and moving on. It’s good to make mistakes! Remember this as my final point… there are more reasons that I can think of that true creativity is inhibited. Search yourself carefully for the answers and when you need to, talk to people who can help.

The modern plague of non-creativity
As the great former leader singer of House of Pain once uttered, ‘I am fed up.’ The latest in mind numbing lack of creativity from the publishing monolith is yet another technological solution to a social problem. Presenting Kindle. I am using this to demonstrate with I think is a discernable lack in creativity of an industry that is increasing going up its own pipes. So why is this so uncreative?

This is not the problem it’s part of the problem
A few years ago the great Stephen King attempted to sell his Plant novella (still unfinished I might add) online through what many thought was a clever system at the time. The problem? The honour system. Apparently it wasn’t worthwhile to write something for online audiences. In plain English, you can’t take what people expect to be free and sell it to them. The problem: the publishing and writing world is notoriously unfair. It’s dog eat dog eat publisher eat author eat audience. We needed a different way of doing things.

Authors are no different
I recently read about the Sobol prize being cancelled for a lack of interest. Even more evidence of a lack of creativity. Sure, there are probably other reasons for the prize being canned. But for a lack of interest? Where are the next generation of writers? Blogging, reading their ‘e-novel’ on their ‘Kindles’… I doubt it. Whatever happened to writing a few good short stories and having them accepted and moving on from their. Hardly none of the publishing industry have done anything about the way it operates (including the authors who are a part of the system) for over 100 years. I haven’t seen one single non-technical innovation from the publishing industry. So now we have Kindle… great we can read the latest novels on an e-reader that feels like a book. Wow. How’s that going to sustain a failing industry? How’s it going to feed forward to the next generation of creative writers? It’s not.

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What we can do about it?
I have no idea. I am guessing that the majority of the 1/10 of 1% of authors that write books make money and don’t want things to change. The creative thinker says: ‘what can we do differently that we haven’t done before that would attract new talent to take the torch forward.’ How can we address the imbalance so that people who are considered to be unpublishable, at least have a shot at making it. The same goes for the film, art and other creative industries as well.

The non-creative plague
Think of the countless movies, television shows, books and the like that are the same old same old. Whatever happened to making new things that were interesting or being innovative. See, this is what happens when you put the dollar ahead of the art. You wind up with an imbalance that gives precedence to formula and spits on creative endeavour.

What to do about it?
I am not sure anything can be done. Have we gone too far in the wrong direction? I can shoulder the blame at the university level and say… yes we should be teaching the next generation of creative people instead of feeding them into the meat grinder. I am still amazed at the amount of movies that are released last year that you can predict point by point. I think I am well and truly alone on this. Never mind… that’s why I took up blogging! Start being creative today. Burn your CUBE! Get out there and create. If your boss stops you… do it anyway. You must do something. The world is in a very non-creative state of affairs. For the love of God… do it!

My personal commitment to creativity
Rather than suffering for my art (which I think is an appalling concept) I have decided to post a creative project each week to my blog. I would say day but I just don’t have that much creative energy. Those of us who have creative ability yet no means to support it that other than side business and work have this on-going internal conflict where we know we should do something but usually sit on our bums (or asses) and do nothing. I think we could easily overthrow the publishing industry for example, if we really wanted to do but we think the world should come to us. Well I can’t wait any longer. I have ideas and almost nobody to share them with so I have to let it out. I am therefore proud to announce my ‘commitment to creativity’ project. In order to fester that inner creativity I have I am going to post something I do each week that is deliberately creative. I www.lukehoughton.com 65

am also working on making a website for daily submissions for people who are creative minded as well. The problem is getting the funding and finding the time. What a bugger! There is also the other problem of offering the project to people and having them commit their intellectual property with no foreseeable way of financial return. I am working on it as I have said so hang on to your hats for that one. It will be a cracker. For now I am trialling my own stuff to see what I can achieve. There is no bigger fool than a hypocrite I heard somewhere. That and we must practice what we preach if we are to be considered credible. If I am telling anybody who reads this to be creative then I must first lead by example. If I don’t then all I am doing is making it up and that is a crock! So in order to be a real person I have decided to unleash my own creativity on my small readership one week, day or minute at a time. I have put the time limit of ‘one week on it’ but it will be sooner but NO LATER than that. Why? Well I keep saying I will do this or I will do that and never got around it. So I have just decided to do it. In order to begin the festivities I have included in my fiction tab The Woman in the River. This is short story I wrote for a woman’s magazine that the bastards didn’t publish! So, my commitment to being creative begins. I am now without excuse. I am not being paid so it’s not for money it’s for the pure exercise of being me and being creative. Enjoy. If you like it give it as many people you can so we can get a community going around this thing. We could start a revolution of creativity and destroy the world! Okay, so maybe that’s a bit excessive. I hope you enjoy it anyway.

Creative Projects so Far
Whilst I have not managed to reach my goal of posting something creative each week I have done a few projects that I am quite proud of: http://lukehoughton.com/fiction/ialsoremember/ A short story about the war based on interviews with my grandfather My other dogs a Doberman:

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During the time I have had the segment I have also put out a challenge to people to redesign a social system in a creative way. I took this challenge myself and reinvented a university program with a

life skills component. And I also mentioned the Nintendo Wii as a great example of creative thinking as well. http://lukehoughton.com/2007/12/15/creative-project-of-the-week-songs-i-made-ages-ago/ I made two songs using FL studio which are on the eclectic side (I will admit that) as part of my commitment to creativity. http://lukehoughton.com/2007/11/02/creative-project-of-the-week-adding-pictures-to-my-novel/ I added pictures to my novel and spiced up the first few chapters. But that’s enough about me now you have a turn at being creative.

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Exercises to stimulate your creativity
1. Create a thought experiment about something you are interested in. For example, what is something that you are very passionate about? 2. Visit http://www.creativethinking.net/WP4_ThoughtExperiments.htm and do the thought experiments here 3. http://youtube.com/watch?v=UjSjZOjNIJg 4. There is a traffic crisis worldwide what are some solutions you could come up with? 5. Another De Bono example

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Skill 5 Intuition: Knowing you and your inner person
Isn’t it funny that one of the most intriguing things about us is us? Why is that we go to school, grow up and follow whatever we do and never think about it the reasons why we make decisions. We have in us dreams, desires and natural inclinations that we often don’t even know are there. However, there are really two different kinds of voices that come out of us when it comes to desires. The first is a desire to do something out of our own strength, what we can call what we would like to do and the other is something that comes out of us, which we can call what we should do. Who are you? Scientists tell us that we have two parts to the brain, the left side and the right side. Traditionally we have called the left side rational and the right side intuitive. In the spiritual workings of man there are also two really strong ways of discerning what comes from where and how to understand it. On the left (rational) side we have cognitive structures or logical conclusions that help us to reach certain kinds of solutions and on the right side we have intuitive reactions that come from the creative inner workings of our spirits. There is much confusion in Christian circles about how our two parts work together and how they function. The left side of the brain is often labelled the logical brain. This side of the brain takes our ideas and shapes them into logical structures for us to understand things so we can appropriately frame the world around us. These frames form the foundation of our thinking when it’s logical thinking. Such thinking is a connected set of ideas that can be logically explained. Those who lean to this side of the brain quite often are adept at putting together very good arguments and can see the loopholes in the logic of others. Some people I work with are very good at building logical bridges from one end of a problem to another but all the time they are in analysis mode. All they are really doing is coming to solid conclusions based on the evidence they have before them. Evidence is the substance that the natural left side of the brain creates things with. Its evidence is solid, factual and represented by sense data that it perceives to be useful to the person who is beholding it. A mathematical equation is purely logical. It has a sound formula to it that if you followed it would result in a known answer. It’s logical and rational. Most human beings operate this way when they are in the spirit. They see something and reach a conclusion based on natural evidence. An example is that I like Lasagne very VERY much. This is a logical conclusion I have reached by eating it and desiring its taste. This has nothing to do with the other side of my brain and it certainly has nothing to do with the way I am.

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Knowing who you are does not come from drawing natural conclusions. It comes from something much deeper than that. If God had exalted the mind beyond its position in the body to be the centre then we could so easily say that we were made to be purely logical and absolutely natural but this isn’t the case. The left side of our brain reaches out into the world around us and makes logical conclusions. The other side the right side of our brain is the intuitive side. This is what we know about ourselves that we haven’t logically concluded. Intuition is an inner knowing that presents us with information we have NOT logically derived from our experience in the world. This information stems from a deep inner knowing within us about something. Quite often we rationalise God out of existence before he has had a chance to tell us something. We draw logical conclusions without thinking about what we already know on the inside. Knowing the real you, who you really are, comes from the information that is not logically derived because it’s that which underpins everything else. Logic can better be thought of 1 + 1 = 2 but stop for a minute. You know what you know about yourself because you know it. I know I like to play the guitar. Something inside me gets great pleasure out of creative things and I really enjoy it. I didn’t reach that conclusion by running a stochastic model, I found it out by just being in the right conditions to find it out. The real you is not logically available it’s intuitively available. If you find yourself attracted to certain things and you can’t explain why then you have found it or at least some of it. I have a small black Chihuahua who went out into the backyard the other day and began barking at a bluetongue lizard. At first I thought she was just being annoying but after a while she got more and more vicious! When I went out the lizard was gone but the dog was still barking. Why was she doing that? Why didn’t she just let it go? She kept going because instinctively she didn’t know why but she had to do it. There was no real reason why but she had to do it. The conditions drew a tendency out of her that she wasn’t aware of and it bubbled to the surface. One time I thought I was called to make lots of money and build a successful business. As time went on and the creative edge of business maintenance set in I realised I was have hidden entrepreneurial desires that come out in certain conditions yet I am a dreadful manager! The day to day grind of trying to come up with sales and make things work was horrible. I felt so tired and exhausted but I didn’t have the money to get someone else to do it. I am called to be creative and if I don’t pay attention … it finds another way to come out of me. I can write a short story or a novel and it just flows out of me. I get ideas, characters and all kinds of things coming to me. Now, I am not special but when the right conditions come along I find the real me.

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Logically if I try to come to conclusions through reasoning, a survey (although they can be helpful in finding the underlying desires) or whatever I won’t find the real me. I already know what I am like and all I need to do is look at the way I am and I will find what I am supposed to be doing. A friend of mine likes to play chess, draw puzzles and play computers. I have found him to always look at what’s going on around him and come to the closest available solution which is less than helpful. However, put the man in front of a computer and he could make it sing. Why? The right conditions present him with what he likes doing being logically creative with technical things. Now if I took the same person and told him he should sit down and come to a reasoned conclusion about who he really is he would have to come up with something rather than simply being who he is. The hardest choice you will ever have to make is deciding to be who you really are. You have been given talents and gifts by God for a reason. What conditions will you need to make it work for you? What will make you bark? One half of your brain is logical for a reason, you need to reach conclusions about things that are well thought out and you need to make good decisions. If you want to learn how to drive a car, add up an equation or discern black from white then you need to know some stuff. That’s logical. You are not a machine and you are not an equation you are a living breathing spirit. I am not saying that you will know what you are supposed to do that’s a completely different story but the beginning of knowing who you are starts with what’s already there. You just need the right conditions to come along to tease that the real you out. In concluding this article I would like to say that I think one of the greatest problems we have in the Christian world we have is that we have a church centric mentality. Every dream and every desire is fine so long as it’s supports the vision of the pastor. There is nothing wrong with vision bearing pastors or church but at some stage you must realise that God may not want you to be involved … he may have other desires in mind for you. Supporting your local church is good so long as you recognise that you are as much a minister as the pastor is and that you have a role to play that is equally as important. There are a lot of people who simply never find their calling in God because they cannot conceive of it outside of the four walls of the church. This is nothing more than religious nonsense. You are important and God loves you remember that. I hope that you think about what I have written here. Don’t look at yourself through logically eyes to find the answer … look inside into your intuition. What does that tell you? If you can’t see past your logic ask yourself this question: What am I naturally drawn to? What do I want to do like nothing else I have ever done before? It’s my prayer that you will find this and over time allow God to show you what he has in store for you. www.lukehoughton.com 71

Each one of us whether we realise or not has something special to offer. I often struck with surprise when I look at the general population of my students as I tell them they had better be sure the career they choose is something they know they can do. Consider for a moment that you may not know enough of yourself to understand that you are actually attracted to certain things and just plain hate others. For example, I hate doing day to day routine things like paper work. Yet I recognise it as being extremely necessary to keep myself employed. What I get a thrill out of is doing creative things like writing, brainstorming and so on. That’s because I have an underlying stream of creativity that flows through me. That creativity is somehow infused into my being. In a previous post on emotions I spoke of the need to look at the underlying nature of emotions and how they come out of us on a day to day basis. In that post I drew the analogy that people will not often come to you and say, ‘I am angry at something that happened in the past so I am going to take it out on you if you don’t mind.’ People get angry for whatever reason and you become the victim of it. The same thing goes for people who act as extroverts in social groups. They have been seen as ‘extroverts’ because that’s a central underlying part of their being flowing out of them.

So what’s different about you?
It has been said that we are all the same and there is nobody who is special. I believe this to be true but for a different reason. Everybody has something different about them that makes them ‘unique’. The connotation of something special means that you have some kind of status that makes you better than the rest. You are no better or worse than anyone… we are all in the same boat. Money, sad to say, does not make you a better person. Quite often it makes you much, much worse. There is however, a side to you that makes you entirely different from those around you. What makes you special is the fact that you have something different than people who are around you. That difference is what makes you an individual and it’s something you need to nurture.

The Mask
What you are really like is often sheltered under a mask that you were to make people think something about you. If you want people to think you are a certain way then you will wear a mask. I really saw a part of the Mask movie in which the main character is asking a psychologist advice about this mystical mask he has found. The psychologist uses the mask as a helpful metaphor to understand the reality of how we pretend in our social interactions. That pretending we do hides the real us from people. What makes us different or special is something that is underneath that. Here is an example in my own life.

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When I sit down to write something I often don’t plan it out. I don’t need to worry about it because it writes itself. The fiction project I have on this website for example I wrote one page at a time by sitting down and just letting it flow through my imagination. That’s me. That may not be you. You may be like my sister in law and be completely into administrative things.

The bottom line
The bottom line of course is that you should not do things you should not be doing. Despite the grammatical errors in that previous sentence it is worth repeating. If you are involved in something that is contrary to your nature you will eventually find yourself confused, frustrated, annoyed and angry. Don’t burn yourself out. There are some things that are stepping stones but if you take a position that is not going to teach you something, or help you reach your goals, then you will wind up miserable, frustrated and annoyed. Just don’t do it. You have something in you that makes you special. It makes you different from those around you. Find out what it is. Find out what your underlying talents are and develop them day by day. Practice them, dream about them, believe them into existence. I want to repeat myself here because I think there are a lot of unfulfilled people in life. You will not find peace in your life until you begin doing what you know you should be. You can change and yes it’s not late or too early. Don’t do what you think you should, find out what you are really like and go towards that one step at a time. After all, you are special in some way. Yesterday I spoke about the deep things that underlying what we do. In that post I spoke about the need to recognise the deep things that reside inside us that lead us to act. What I want to do today is begin the deep things series by talking about how to recognise the underlying emotions in situations that you may be familiar with. Feelings like superiority, happiness and joy are all deep level emotions that we need to recognise. People don’t come up to you and said, ‘you know what I feel angry because of something that happened to me once and whether you like it or don’t I am going to dump it all on you.’ What really happens is the person explodes, you cop the blast and then all things from there stem forward to a messy conclusion. Why is that? I think personally that this occurs because we don’t really know how to recognise the underlying emotions that dominate us and why we feel the way we do. We all have them. Why is it then that we systemically set about ignoring what the inner person is telling us. The language of that inner person is not words: it’s thoughts, ideas, pictures, symbols and suggestions.

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Often when we think about emotions, we think about preferences. Such preferences I think are stored on the level of our mind. A preference towards Lasagne or KFC is a mental decision based on a external sense. The sense of taste and the sensation we enjoy when we eat such things stimulates in us a desire. That desire eventually becomes a preference towards certain predilections in the area of ’sense’. What happens when the area of our emotions is stimulated by something beyond our immediate sense? What of those things that we notice about ourselves but simply do not like. Such as: anger, criticism, hatred and the like? Where do such things come from?

Foundational Perspectives
Say for a moment you have working class values. If you don’t think about what your values are and imagine that you thought about work and it’s value in your life. I am plagued with working class values. I cannot see a way around it. Almost everything I do has to be work. One day I sat back and questioned this after reading an earlier version of Richard Branson’s autobiography. That person worked hard… but he worked smart. He, with the help of thousands of other people, built the Virgin empire which despite it’s critics is very large and very successful. He now spends his time flashing that toothy smile for the cameras and evaluating business plans (reminds me of the e-myth … not not e-commerce). The reality is this simple: the rich don’t make money from hard work… they make money from having a good idea, making it work through collective mobilisation and so on. I know people who work as long and hard as Bill Gates and they as broke as broke can be. Why is that? I was bought up in a house where both parents worked hard and made very little money. That is not their fault. It’s a deep ‘foundational perspective’ that flows out as a underlying emotion causing actions. We need to recognise these foundational things and be aware of them. These deep things we believe have feelings attached to them. They are so real and powerful that they make us think and act in s ways that we often don’t understand.

The first step: knowing how you feel
These foundational perspectives are the basic set of ideas that we hold to that help us to make sense of the world. From these we can deduce that there are emotions that build from these perspectives that are part of us. We often identify ourselves with certain things like work by attaching our emotions to them. We cannot help it. When I say I am an academic it makes me feel something. Something deep. That deep thing that I feel is a sense or a ‘knowing’ of what I think an academic is. I think of ideas, papers, teaching, marking and so on. Each one of those activities raises within me a certain level of ‘feeling’ that I really don’t understand. When I think of the amount of www.lukehoughton.com 74

administration I have to do in my job… I have feelings of dread! I hate administrative work though it’s necessary. Those underlying feelings are incredibly important because that’s how we can know what we are like not what we think we should be. The question for me is why do I hate administrative work? I can tolerate it, I can use positive thinking to cope with it but essentially I hate it. Deep down there is some feeling arising out of the real me, the inner me, letting me know that I am not like this. This doesn’t mean I quit doing it… but I probably should not pursue a career in it. If we think about this from another angle. Why do I feel the need to avoid the work? What is it in me that makes me want to not do it. It could be that I simply hate it. On the other hand it could be because I am lazy! If you have inclinations towards certain kinds of things (I am not talking about nasty things) like sport, writing, reading or whatever that’s you coming out. I really like to write. There’s something in me that feels the need or desire to do it. I cannot explain why. Ever met someone who just sends you batty and you cannot work out why? That’s

something in you that sends you nuts. I met this guy once who just had to be the centre of attention. He would make loud jokes and remarks and no matter what he would always have to be the centre of attention. It got the point where I felt like strangling this guy because I am exactly the opposite. I don’t like to be loud or to be the centre of attention. At heart there was a personality conflict. Neither of us could really help it… it’s just our core personality floating to the surface. Think for a moment why you are the way you are. Why not in the interim take this personality test to get you started. If you would prefer a funnier test why not take this one that helps you see what kind of Simpson you are! By the way I am a moderate introvert.

Understanding underlying emotions and moving towards intuition
It’s 5pm and you are on your way home after a long day of work. As you leave work you slide effortlessly into traffic. The more you drive the slower things go until finally you hit a solid stop two minutes drive into your journey. Up ahead all you see is a long row of cars, banked up for miles, with no real hope of escape. How does that make you feel? To be honest it makes me feel mad. I have waited for a long time to get here and now I am basically stuck because everybody leaves work at the same time. No matter when I leave work I ALWAYS encounter traffic. Now I am getting angry. Is it really the traffic making me angry or is it something else? I think it’s something else. When we are faced with a situation in which things aren’t going our way we often display outwardly emotions that are reflections of our inner thoughts. What ever we are displaying on the outside is www.lukehoughton.com 75

what we have built on the inside. As you recognise patterns in your life, like anger, worry and so on. You will begin to notice that these things are deep down in you and that they build themselves into perspectives in your mind. How do you feel when you have been picked on for something you didn’t do? Has anyone ever forgotten your birthday? How did you react? Those reactions come from the inner needs that are usually expressed as emotions, thoughts, ideas or deep down suggestions.

The key to recognising underlying emotions
The key lies in watching how you behave. For children we might use a behaviour diary to check on what our kids are doing wrong. I think for some of us we need to reflect on how we act. For instance when you are sitting in traffic, ask yourself why traffic bothers you so much. Try this: 1. Recognise the feeling Notice the style or quality of the feeling as it arises. Then: 2. Question why Reflection begins with asking why? Why do I feel this way? What makes me angry when I am stuck in traffic? Why do I feel this way? One of the key things I suffer from is setting silly goals for myself. These ‘benchmarks’ are things like: ‘when I have enough money I will be happy’ or something like, ‘unless I do this or that I am not cutting it’. The only place that goal exists is in my head. For me it’s like I need to be something special in order to feel pleased with myself. These benchmarks are total fantasies that are basically connected to my brain in someway that I can’t really explain. What I am learning at the moment is to shift these perspectives I have set by creating new things to believe in. That doesn’t mean that I live with my faults… but it does mean I reduce the expectation I have on myself to over perform. Why do we strive for so much anyway? I mean what’s the bloody point? When I see people speeding in traffic and running red lights I wonder… what’s the rush? What thing in them tells them that they have to perform. What set of ideas floating around in their brain says, ‘you have to be there on time so get there now as fast as you can.’ This is madness. One day all this rushing will come to end … along with your life. So why worry about it? If you are always rushing ask yourself why? If you are always late… why are you always late? There’s a reason. Maybe you just like people looking at you. Who knows?

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3. Begin to understand the underlying tensions that create the emotions As you ask why, you should be able to identify what emotion is coming out of you at that time (I will discuss this is more detail in the next post). There are things that create in us tensions that force us to act in certain ways. The western society is filled with pressure to perform. We have a huge crisis of materialism at the moment that is driving people to work harder, faster and longer without seriously thinking about the consequences. We all know stress is a killer yet we continue to work more and more and more until we explode. Why? What tensions are in us that make us do this? Why are they there? In the next post in this series I am going to talk about some techniques I find helpful for recognising underlying emotions. The key thing to remember from this post is you are human and you will

have outburst of emotions. It’s a part of life and you need to be aware of this as you travel along life’s road. Remember, you have them whether you acknowledge it or not. I was in the car driving home from work when I suddenly realised something. Big actions often come from deep seated unconscious feelings that we really don’t understand. Think about the decision to have children, was it a rational choice or something that you felt you had to do. What about the choice to follow a career in the field you are in? Was there something about that kind of job that just spoke to you? A lot of the time the choices we make, especially those from the heart, cause us to take huge actions. There is a thing called post-hoc rationalisation which I lectured on the other day that says we often take actions and later justify them by making sense of what happened because we don’t really know why we did what we did. Take me for instance. I am attracted to things that are new. No, not shiny things… new things. I like to create stuff and make it. In my job I don’t get much of a chance to do that at present so I have been a bit tired. But, when I am working through something new and ideas are flowing I feel like I have had a fire set under my backside. It’s truly wonderful. Why is that? It’s because deep down that’s me and when I see that in the world it’s me coming out. As small step we need to begin to pay attention to what we do and trace it back to what we think and then some kind of underlying feeling or emotion. These deep things we ignore are us. I have once heard it put this way you are not what you think about you are the bit behind the thoughts. I think in business we need to pay more attention to these things and take them more seriously. I think this is an interesting topic and I will be posting more about this in the next few days. Thanks for reading.

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Allowing a free flow of intuition
Our western educational process generally discourages us from following in the footsteps of intuitive thinking. We are encouraged to follow the well worn path of reasoning but very rarely are we asked to intuitively think about things. Think for a moment about the things you know about yourself. Say for example, you are driving down the motorway and somebody cuts you off. What’s the first thing you would say? What kind of things do you find funny? These kinds you just know about yourself are intuition. You don’t need to go to far to find the answers because these are things that you know. Ever gone to do something and you felt that you just shouldn’t do it? Or perhaps met an individual that you just didn’t like from the very first time you laid eyes on them? Why is that? I teach a lot of people at university who are very good at reasoning but not so good at intuition. It’s almost like we thing we have to switch off the role of intuition in our education process because it’s counter cultural. Today I want to make a case for encouraging the free flow of intuition.

When you know that you know
The Late Steve Irwin once said in an interview that he always had a deep passion for wildlife. You can tell he wasn’t lying when the man used to quite happily pick up a snake and not worry about it. I had the pleasure of seeing him perform literally weeks before he died. He put so much passion into his shows that it was really amazing to watch. He wasn’t pretending and he certainly wasn’t making it up in my opinion … it was 100% passion. How could he do that? I think because he just knew what he should be doing. He knew that he knew that he should be working with wildlife and with animals. You have instincts on the inside of you that are dying to get out. Can I tell you that you need to develop these instincts. That which you know about yourself will change as you learn more about it but the core ‘knowing’ or intuition you have will never change. That which you know that you know about you is who you really are.

You never have to think about intuitive things
In a previous article I spoke about the art of conjecture. Often when we take guesses we are basing our decision making on our intuition. Harvard Academic Daniel Isenberg found that top managers often make most of their decisions when they talk out loud to themselves. Why is this? It’s because they are thinking through their decisions to see what feels right. Intuition is always there you never really have to think about it… but sometimes our subtle reasoning processes make us believe things we think are helpful but really are not. A conclusion after careful scrutiny is not intuitive thinking. We are using intuitive thinking when we are doing what our gut is telling is the right thing to do. www.lukehoughton.com 78

Intuition has built some great things
Go back and study some of the greatest entrepreneurs. How many of them just knew that they would make it and this ‘faith’ drove them on to create impossible things. I am talking of people like Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson and so on. If you carefully look at how these people make their decisions there is as much reasoning as there is intuition. Some of the biggest decisions I have made have been through intuition. It’s not a flawless guide… but it’s a lot better than me just reasoning. I would encourage you today to stop reasoning so much and begin looking towards your intuition. Knowing stuff is good because it develops us and makes us better. However, than can be no replacement for genuine ‘gut instinct’ in times of crisis, testing and extremity. Don’t rely of your mathematics or basic processes of mental reasoning only… remember your gut!

Intuition Exercises
1. What would you feel like if you had peace? 2. What would it feel like if you could feel it? Write down your answer. 3. Think of something that went terribly wrong in your life. Write it down. Now ask yourself were there any alarm bells ringing in your mind before those things happened? If so… why did you ignore them? How did they make you feel?

www.lukehoughton.com

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Authors note
Did you like what you have read so far? If you did why not navigate to www.lukehoughton.com today and sign up for my feed. On this site you will get regular blog posts from me plus you can be a part of some of the up and coming creative projects I have planned. Thanks for reading.

Solving Life Problems: 5 Essential skills you need to make it

Description

This short e-book covers the basics of what it takes to make it in life. I cover 5 areas:
Learning: What learning is and how it works
Problem Solving: What does it mean to solve problems?
Stra...

This short e-book covers the basics of what it takes to make it in life. I cover 5 areas:

Learning: What learning is and how it worksProblem Solving: What does it mean to solve problems?Strategic Thinking and Perspective Shifting: how do we think in a strategic way?Creative Thinking: What does it mean to be creative?Intuition: How to free encourage our intuition in life.

The book covers the basics of these skills and why they are so important to managing life.